Heavy hitters offer Chicago Olympic advice

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Other cities competing for the 2016 Games so far are Doha, Qatar; Madrid, Spain; Tokyo; and Baku, Azerbaijan. The IOC will pick a host city in 2009.

A recent misstep before the start of the Pan Am Games has Chicago organizers already trying to counter negative stereotypes about Americans.

A USOC worker last week scrawled the message “Welcome to the Congo!” on a board in the organization’s Rio de Janeiro media center. The greeting, reportedly in reference to warm temperatures, was blasted by Brazilians, who didn’t like having their country compared to a less-developed nation and viewed the Americans as arrogant.

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The USOC apologized, and Sandusky said the Chicago delegation in Brazil was conscious of “being humble and listening.”

Another issue Olympic host city hopefuls must address is whether they have the venues — or enough money to build them.

Chicago lacks some of the major Olympic facilities, including a $1 billion lakefront athletes’ village and a $366 million temporary stadium. But Payne believes major construction isn’t a big hurdle for a city like Chicago.

“I think that they would have confidence that the design, technological expertise that Chicago could bring to the task would be more than adequate to pull it off,” Payne said, noting that Atlanta had to build a stadium and athletes’ village, too.

Trouble over financing for a new stadium did complicate New York’s bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics and the Games eventually were awarded to London.

Ueberroth said the government, private sector and community must come together as one to make the Games work. In Chicago, donors have raised millions of dollars to finance the city’s bid, and the government has pledged millions more in financial guarantees in case the Games falter.

An Olympics can’t happen without thousands of volunteers, and Romney, a millionaire businessman, said they should be treated like regular employees. Not everyone who applied to volunteer in Salt Lake City got a spot, and those who did went through rigorous training on both the work they would do and the attitude they should have.

“We tried to change the normal American attitude of, ’These are the rules and we’re here to enforce them.’ Instead it was, ’You were our guests; we’re here to make sure you have a great time,”’ said Romney, who described the Olympics as one of the great experiences in his life. “Any city who gets the chance (to host the Games) should be ecstatic.”

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