Thursday, 1 October 2009
What they are saying about tomorrow's 2016 decision
So while this week marked just 3 years until the London's 2012 Olympics tomorrow the IOC will decide which city will host the Summer Olympics in 2016. I will be 50 that year *picks head up of desk* so what better than to celebrate by being in the windy city that summer wherever our lives have taken us. Obviously I'm hugely partisan but if you are interested I have found the following non-biased guides to the four host cities: Chicago; Rio de Janeiro; Tokyo; Madrid. As well as some other bits and pieces.
The Wall Street Journal has put together a candidate guide written by their reporters locally in each city. They also have an interesting article on those against the games, particularly in Chicago where this group have been trying to make their voices heard. In Sports Illustrated mostly known for it's bikini issue and monotonous articles on baseball and NASCAR, they break the news that Barack Obama is a sports fan and give three reasons why each candidate city could win or lose.
Reuters says that the Rio bid is banking on "magical financial growth," this an interesting comment made by Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva after Brazil recently cancelled several international swimming competitions they were due to hold because of a lack of money.
The Times suggests that one of the IOC's biggest sponsors McDonald's having their home in Chicago will help their cause. The Golden Arches were first seen in Illinois in 1955 in case you never knew. It also makes the point that Tokyo already have $4 billion banked to pay for the Games.
So while this week marked just 3 years until the London's 2012 Olympics tomorrow the IOC will decide which city will host the Summer Olympics in 2016. I will be 50 that year *picks head up of desk* so what better than to celebrate by being in the windy city that summer wherever our lives have taken us. Obviously I'm hugely partisan but if you are interested I have found the following non-biased guides to the four host cities: Chicago; Rio de Janeiro; Tokyo; Madrid. As well as some other bits and pieces.The Wall Street Journal has put together a candidate guide written by their reporters locally in each city. They also have an interesting article on those against the games, particularly in Chicago where this group have been trying to make their voices heard. In Sports Illustrated mostly known for it's bikini issue and monotonous articles on baseball and NASCAR, they break the news that Barack Obama is a sports fan and give three reasons why each candidate city could win or lose.
Reuters says that the Rio bid is banking on "magical financial growth," this an interesting comment made by Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva after Brazil recently cancelled several international swimming competitions they were due to hold because of a lack of money.
The Times suggests that one of the IOC's biggest sponsors McDonald's having their home in Chicago will help their cause. The Golden Arches were first seen in Illinois in 1955 in case you never knew. It also makes the point that Tokyo already have $4 billion banked to pay for the Games.
The BBC does it's normal bang-up job and have a 'blogger' on the scene amongst all the spin in Copenhagen. The BBC are also providing a Live Text service from Copenhagen starting tomorrow morning. With a business head on The Economist asks if staging the Olympics at all is such a great prize? By and large economists have found it hard to detect the benefits of past large sporting events.
Even the Daily Mail joins in with quite a decent preview but on the basis the newspaper walks around with a bag on it's head it irks me that they make Chicago the favourite. The Mirror write that Madrid have been trying to style themselves as the 'Hispanic bid' rather than European to avoid the unofficial view that the Games should alternate around the continents. The 2012 and 2014 Winter Olympics (Sochi, Russia) are in Europe.
Of course Obama's decision to attend the final presentations in Copenhagen tomorrow has caused most of America's right-wing loonies to make it a political issue, no more than Glenn Beck, America's very own Augusto Pinochet.
Opinion polls are hard to believe as most are done locally and tend to only attract people vehemently swayed positively or negatively but the best authority on the whole business of choosing Olympic venues is GamesBid.com, who continually use a mathmatical model to analyse each bid on a whole range of unpredictable importances. Games.Bid.com's current BidIndex, as they call it, has Rio ahead by just 0.2 index points.
Chicago's score is up to the highest it has ever been on the back of Obama's efforts to get to Copenhagen and projects the closest finish ever. Despite expert's opinions that both Toronto's and Paris' 2008 bid was superior, BidIndex predicted Beijing the winner.... it also predicted Paris for 2012....
I've probably bored you enough already but the IOC's September Evaluation Report of the four cities can be read here. Within the report they have Madrid and Rio as the most favoured with city residents and workers (85% each), Chicago with 67% and Tokyo with 56%. And finally what do Paddy Power say about tomorrow's betting? Well Chicago are 4/7, Rio 7/4, Madrid 8/1 and Tokyo 20/1. All will be revealed tomorrow.
¶ 17:06 Even the Daily Mail joins in with quite a decent preview but on the basis the newspaper walks around with a bag on it's head it irks me that they make Chicago the favourite. The Mirror write that Madrid have been trying to style themselves as the 'Hispanic bid' rather than European to avoid the unofficial view that the Games should alternate around the continents. The 2012 and 2014 Winter Olympics (Sochi, Russia) are in Europe.
Of course Obama's decision to attend the final presentations in Copenhagen tomorrow has caused most of America's right-wing loonies to make it a political issue, no more than Glenn Beck, America's very own Augusto Pinochet.
Opinion polls are hard to believe as most are done locally and tend to only attract people vehemently swayed positively or negatively but the best authority on the whole business of choosing Olympic venues is GamesBid.com, who continually use a mathmatical model to analyse each bid on a whole range of unpredictable importances. Games.Bid.com's current BidIndex, as they call it, has Rio ahead by just 0.2 index points.
Chicago's score is up to the highest it has ever been on the back of Obama's efforts to get to Copenhagen and projects the closest finish ever. Despite expert's opinions that both Toronto's and Paris' 2008 bid was superior, BidIndex predicted Beijing the winner.... it also predicted Paris for 2012....
I've probably bored you enough already but the IOC's September Evaluation Report of the four cities can be read here. Within the report they have Madrid and Rio as the most favoured with city residents and workers (85% each), Chicago with 67% and Tokyo with 56%. And finally what do Paddy Power say about tomorrow's betting? Well Chicago are 4/7, Rio 7/4, Madrid 8/1 and Tokyo 20/1. All will be revealed tomorrow.
