Encouraged by positive responses in polling conducted within the international Olympic movement, the U.S. Olympic Committee will consider Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco as potential bid candidates for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Houston and Philadelphia, which also made presentations to the USOC, failed to make the cut.
USOC officials have been emphatic since the beginning of the review process in May that they may decide not to bid for the 2016 Games, but they believe they have three cities capable of making winning bids.
“The fact that we’re taking three cities forward at this point, I think, reflects on the optimism we heard in our polling,” said USOC vice president Bob Ctvrtlik, who also is a member of the International Olympic Committee. “We’ve inched a little further towards going forward.”
USOC chairman Peter Ueberroth conceded he was less optimistic the U.S. will decide to bid.
“I’m an anchor,” said Ueberroth, who ran the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee. “I’m not going to let them waste their money and their efforts unless we feel they can have a real good chance to win this thing.”
While the five interested cities prepared for meetings with USOC officials in recent weeks, the USOC polled 58 IOC members and 42 others within the international Olympic movement to determine whether a U.S. candidate would receive fair consideration. The USOC also ranked the cities for the technical merit of their proposals.
Of the 100 international officials polled by the USOC, Ctvrtlik said, only three said the U.S. should not bid.
“The insights that we gained were very revealing,” Ctvrtlik said. “Our international research made it very, very clear – in spite of the relative strengths of the two cities that will not be going forward – that Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco were best positioned within the international sports movement to go forward.”
The USOC hopes to decide before the end of the year whether it will nominate a candidate to the IOC. If it does, it plans to select that city next May. The IOC will choose the 2016 winner in 2009.
“We have to figure out who has the best chance to win,” Ueberroth said, “if anybody does.”
John Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com.
