OBAMA FOR USA
Michelle Obama spoke with reporters in Copenhagen, where she traveled to help gain support for Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. The vote is Friday.
Michelle Obama arrived Wednesday in Copenhagen and got right to work on behalf of Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics. By the afternoon, she was hunkered down in a hotel, meeting with voting members of the International Olympic Committee. The mission — to sway delegates before Friday’s vote — felt oddly familiar.
“This is like a campaign, just like Iowa,” Obama said at a welcome dinner for Chicago 2016 supporters, according to a pool report. “The international community may not understand that, but the I.O.C. is like a caucus. Nobody makes the decision until they’re sitting there.”
Oprah Winfrey, who is in Copenhagen on behalf of the Chicago bid, called it a “sprint to the finish line,” the pool report said.
Sir Craig Reedie, an I.O.C. voting member from Britain, met with Obama and said she was charming but declined to provide details of their conversation.
Her time in Copenhagen, Obama said, will be used to “hold some hands, to have some conversations, to share our visions, to make the world understand this is an opportunity for the United States to connect with the world in a really important way at a very critical time.”
In a telephone interview from Copenhagen, Reedie said, “People from the bid cities are not beating you on the head when you come out of the lift, but the process is certainly under way.”
On Friday, each of the four bid cities will make a final 70-minute presentation to the 106 I.O.C. delegates eligible to vote. They will cast their choice electronically — and secretly. Delegates from countries with a city in the competition may not vote until after that city’s bid is eliminated.
If no city receives a majority of the votes in the first round, the city with fewest votes is eliminated. Bid watchers predicted that this vote would require the full three rounds. In the last I.O.C. vote, for the 2012 Games, London beat Paris by a 54-50 margin. In this race, Chicago and Rio de Janeiro are considered the front-runners in the field with Madrid and Tokyo.
“You can feel the electricity in the air,” said Patrick G. Ryan, Chicago’s bid leader, according to the pool report. “You can feel the competition in the air.”
The bid teams are meeting continually to review their standing among the various I.O.C. delegates who may be undecided — or, in some cases, swayed from their current choice.
The highest-profile members of each team — like the heads of state in Copenhagen from all four bids — are assigned to speak with those delegates.
Reedie, who helped obtain the 2012 Summer Games for London, knows the process well. He was part of the team lobbying alongside Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose last-minute efforts are thought to have made the difference in the voting.
“We decided four years ago that it’s probably not a good idea for heads of state to ask for votes, so I don’t think anyone will be doing that,” Reedie said of the top leaders heading to Denmark, including presidents, a king, a prince and a prime minister. “They just need to be supportive of the candidate city. That’s enough. Everybody understands why Mrs. Obama’s here.”
If Reedie does have a favorite this time around, he is not saying.
“The favorite is the last person you spoke to,” he said. “They can be that influential.” (NYTimes.com)
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