So in the end I needn't have worried - Obama's stardust didn't even come close to sealing the 2016 Olympics for Chicago. Completely predictable that the President's domestic enemies would try to score points over his part in this failure, but also completely misplaced - from what I can gather about the patterns of voting in the first round, delegates were to some extent voting in informal regional blocs. This placed Chicago at a natural disadvantage, given that the US has fewer natural 'tribal' allies than the other three contenders. But the stage where this political point-scoring goes beyond being merely misplaced and becomes...well, surreal, is the stage at which people start suggesting that Sarah Palin would have had a better chance of convincing the IOC delegates of Chicago's merits than Barack Obama.
The truly scary thing is I think they actually believe it.
Also worthy of note is this startling summary by 'consultant' Bill Mallon of what the rejection of Chicago tells us about the nature of the IOC itself -
"that reveals that they’re so euro-centric and international-centric, it’s ridiculous"
Euro-centric for sending the Olympics to Rio de Janeiro? OK...
But what on earth does 'international-centric' actually mean? From my limited knowledge of Ameri-speak, I can only deduce that it's supposed to mean that the IOC is 'centred' around the 96% of the world's population who live outside the United States. Heaven forbid!
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