Here in Copenhagen (where the IOC is still having their conference) it has surfaced that Chicago was never even close to getting the 2016 OL - and the scandal is that the US Olympic committee knew it in advance, so all the US efforts were in vain...

The reason goes back to the mid-eighties Olympics were the IOC were in dire straits economically and the US agreed to bail them out - however there was a catch: The US would receive a percentage (I think it is about 10) of all future revenues coming to the IOC... Since the Olympics has been a very good deal practically ever since(We are talking billions here), the IOC now doesnt want to do this anymore (they want to use more money for developing sport in the third world - well that is what they say - who knows ;-) ), anyways - so a large contingent of the IOC decided to boycott Chicago...

The decent thing for the US IOC to do would have been to at least tell this to Obama to keep him from this embarrassment... but there you have it.

And no Im not a big fan of the IOC, which is an elitist semi-corrupt organization on a lot of levels, but I do think that there should have been an expiration date on the US loan...