Not to overly dwell on the disappointing Chicago Olympic bid of a fortnight ago, but you have to attribute timing. To the degree that the International Olympic Committee can parcel out the Summer Games around the globe, they try. The Olympics have been hosted in North America and Europe multiple times. They’ve also been to Asia and Australia. But not Africa or South America. So, all things being (reasonably) equal, it was Rio’s to lose.
Sure, there were other factors weighing in. Some IOC members were reportedly turned off by President Obama’s deus ex machina cameo – and might have over-reacted.
And nobody is mentioning it, but it hardly helped that the lead-up to Obama’s pitch and the IOC’s decision was also the time frame that YouTube was providing the world with video of that horrific, gang-related killing of a Chicago high school student. Background material put the brutal beating into sobering, shocking context. This was no isolated incident.