My mother called me early Friday morning with the news that Chicago had lost its bid for the Olympics.
After all the effort that went into trying to host the 2016 Summer Games, Chicago was unexpectedly and unceremoniously booted in the first round. Ouch.
The press has been doing an autopsy all weekend on the pitch. Was it a political fight between the International Olympic Committee and the United States Olympic Committee?
Was it the lack of confidence in Chicago’s ability to adequately host and pay for the games? Was it the brutal street killing of an innocent 16-year-old that made international headlines when a video of the murder was put on YouTube?
There have been many reasons as to why Chicago didn’t get the games. They run the range from plausible, “the Olympics have never been held in the Southern Hemisphere and it was about time” to the ridiculous, “The world has rejected Obama” (thank you Matt Drudge).
The reason Chicago lost is probably a combination of many different things: Rio made a better pitch, the USOC greedily attempted to create a TV network and thus gain all broadcast revenues, the IOC bidding process itself is transparently corrupt, etc.
The brutal street violence highlighted in the YouTube video couldn’t have helped, but still, Rio has more than 4,000 murders a year and anyone who has seen “City of God” knows Chicago’s west side doesn’t hold a candle to the ghettos of Brazil.
The real truth is, after reading the post-mortems and talking to friends and family back home, Chicagoans just weren’t too excited about the games in the first place.
It’s not that Chicagoans don’t want the world to see why we live in the best big city in the U.S. Chicagoans have a sense of collective pride that has lasted through a massive fire, two Daley’s and a hundred years without the Cubs winning the World Series. We still love our town.
But the people of Chicago were wary of the games. If Chicago can’t regulate parking meters or fix potholes without massive inefficiency or corruption, how then, in just more than six years, are we going to be able to expand the CTA, create facilities and raise money necessary to host the Olympics?
The debate often mirrored the one on this campus over the new football stadium, “with the serious infrastructure and fiscal problems we currently face, how can we justify putting this massive sports project at the top of our priority list?”
The answer always given is that investing in the games (football stadium, etc.) will generate economic development in the future. The money going into sporting events will “trickle down” into the communities that surround it.
Anyone who has driven down 94 through the Loop can see the remnants of one of the last events to “generate economic development” in the form of two miles of highway dividers put up for the 1996 Democratic National Convention. The dividers on the way to the fancy hotels are much nicer than the rest.
And it is through that prism that people are distrusting of the Chicago Olympic bid.
No Olympic games have made money since the Los Angeles games, and both of the next two games, Vancouver and London, are already massively over budget.
To boot, Mayor Daley, aka “King Dick,” has a 32 percent approval rating. Only at the last second was he able to get the City Council to approve a blank check to fund the Olympics (and the Olympics require a blank check).
Many see this as a cheap stunt meant to secure Daley’s legacy and distract from Chicago’s massive problems.
Still, all the problems aside, I’m not happy Chicago lost the Olympics. Sure there were a host of problems with the bid, and not getting the games is probably better financially.
But I still love my city and I don’t cheer that it, or any other American city, lost its chance to show the world what makes it so special. We may have lost the Olympics, but we’re still better than New York City or Los Angeles.
So in the aftermath there’s nothing left to do besides pick up, dust off and congratulate Rio. Let the 2016 games be for the People of the Sun. You earned it.
O’Connor is a senior studying political science and philosophy.
