Chicago comes up short in IOC report
OLYMPICS
Though the city is a finalist for the 2016 games, the Olympic committee criticizes its transportation infrastructure and venues.
ATHENS -- Today is the first day Chicago 2016 bid committee chairman Patrick Ryan could talk up the city's bid to International Olympic Committee members, and Ryan is making the most of the time before he flies home Friday.
Building those relationships, permitted now that the IOC has made the city a finalist along with Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro, could be a decisive factor when the IOC members pick the 2016 host Oct. 2, 2009.
But Ryan also has to deconstruct the baggage the city is carrying from an IOC working group report that ranked Chicago's bid third behind Tokyo and Madrid and raised issues about the city's transport plans, venue costs and financial guarantee.
The city placed fifth in three of the 11 areas the report evaluated, fourth in three others and no higher than second in any. So much for the Internet "Olympic insider" analyses and betting sites that had made Chicago the favorite.
"We never thought we were," Ryan said. "Where we are is a very good position to be in.
"This is an interim report on some specific parts of the bid process, i.e., the technical review. The good part is they have said, 'Here are some areas you should address, and here are some thoughts on how to address them.' "
Though rankings at this stage of the process have had little impact on recent IOC host city decisions, lobbyists for the other finalists likely will remind many IOC members about the Chicago negatives cited in the report.
Ryan is taking the report the way the IOC wants, as a guideline for improvement. He will make use of it in another way.
"They also give you the opposition's playbook," Ryan said.
This is how Ryan reacted to the specific criticisms:
Transport: The IOC knocked Chicago's plans in two areas of the evaluation, general infrastructure (Chicago ranked fourth) and transport concept (fifth).
The report noted Chicago's application file said the city plans to spend $27 billion on highway and transit projects by 2016 and that was "not consistent" with the $2.7 billion figure for transport also included in the file.
"I think we confused them inadvertently on that," Ryan said, explaining that the numbers likely reflected both money already appropriated and costs of long-term projects yet to be funded.
The report also questioned how people would get from rail lines to the large concentration of sports venues planned for the lakefront, saying they were "not in close proximity."
