Olympics

So, Rio de Janeiro has won the 2016 summer Olympics, dashing the hopes of Chicagoans, including President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, adviser Valerie Jarrett, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and, to boot, Oprah Winfrey.

I'm sanguine. Chicago is one of my favorite cities in the United States, and would have been a great host. Fabulous food, plenty of space, beautiful scenery. It's hard to see it lose, but I'd rather visit without all the hubbub.

But, on the other hand, I'd love to go to Rio. And, just saying, any Foreign Policy poohbahs who might be reading, I think this site could use some hard-hitting ground truth on the policy implications of heated Olympic competition. I'm available, and hear there's one coming up! 

This week, I took a look at how Olympic preparations are faring in my hometown of London. The answer? Not great, per se. The city will spend billions and billions of pounds (money it doesn't have) on infrastructure it doesn't really need. London's got plenty of stadiums. It could use certain transport investments, but it seems those aren't happening. And the price tag will likely hit $40 billion. That's as much as Beijing spent. It's more than Britain's stimulus, enacted last fall to ward off economic contraction. It's a lot of money, and means London might end up with a lot of debt.

All of which has convinced me that the only countries which should really want the Olympics in these economic dark days are big emerging economies. Why? Well, developed economies tend to have plenty of infrastructure in the type of major cities which host Olympics. They also tend to have high labor costs. Often, they don't need the Olympics to attract more tourists, either. 

But big emerging economies -- like the BRICs -- often need serious infrastructure investment. They have higher GDP growth rates, which helps with legacy debt. They have also been hit less-hard by the recession (a generalization, of course, but mostly true).

It seems that this is being born out, too...BRIC countries have won three of the five most recently announced Olympics. We have Beijing 2008, Vancouver 2010, London 2012, Sochi 2014, and Rio de Janeiro 2016.

I'm putting my money down for New Delhi 2020!

VANDERLEI ALMEIDA/AFP/Getty Images

So much for that presidential pitch:

Rio de Janeiro and Madrid are vying to be the host of the 2016 Olympic Games, after Chicago and Tokyo were eliminated by the International Olympic Committee.

Tokyo secured the fewest of the 95 votes available in the second round at the meeting in Copenhagen. Chicago was knocked out in the first round vote.

Cities will be eliminated until one secures a majority with the winner set to be announced after 1730 BST.

Chicago's early exit was a surprise, with bookmakers making them favourites.

For reasons my colleague Annie Lowrey explained, Chicago may have actually doged a bullet today. But it's still pretty embarassing for Obama, who traveled to Copenhagen to make a last minute pitch for Chicago. 

One has to imagine the White House thought that Chicago had this in the bag if President Obama was willing to take time away from debates on health care, Afghanistan, and Iran to advocate for his hometown. As John Hoberman wrote on the site this week:

If he fails, the right wing will pillory him as a dilettante who should have kept his eye on weightier affairs of state. Nor would a "loss" to the president of Brazil or the prime minister of Spain do much for Mr. Obama's international stature. All of this suggests that Obama should have left well enough alone and stayed at home.

More to come. 

"It's war!" cries Brazilian newspaper O Globo, lamenting an article in the latest New Yorker on gang violence in Rio de Janeiro, which comes out mere days before the International Olympic Committee decides the location of the 2016 summer games.

The article, by journalist Jon Lee Anderson, describes the fighting between gangs in Rio's favelas, which he says are spread everywhere in the city: "there is no way to completely escape Rio's misery."  O Globo, which has a section online dedicated specifically to the city's Olympic bid, notes that Anderson said the timing of the article is a coincidence, and that he believes Rio is fully capable of hosting the games.

The paper couldn't help but notice the "sad coincidence" that this same week, Chicago -- Rio's main competitor -- faced its own shocking gang violence moment, with widespread circulation of a cell-phone video footage showing the fatal beating of 16-year-old Derrion Albert.

As Chicago booster Michelle Obama said herself, "the gloves are off".

ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP/Getty Images

Last year, Passport made the case for Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, hosting the 2016 Olympics over closest rivals Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid.

Today, one Chicago website is making that same case.

"It would be exciting to host the Olympics here in Chicago," ChicagoansforRio.com says. "But you know what would be even better? Rio de Janeiro. Just let Rio host the 2016 Olympics. We don't mind. Honest."

Just eight days until the announcement of the winner, Chicagoans for Rio break down some reasons Brazil would host the games better. For instance: 

Statues. Rio has Christ standing. Chicago has Lincoln sitting. (To be fair, Chicago also has statues of Lincoln standing.)

Signature events. Rio has naked people dancing. Chicago has chubby people eating.

Nickname. Rio is the "Marvelous City." Chicago is the "Second City."

The site also points out Chicago has a budget deficit of nearly $220 million; they claim Rio has a $0 budget deficit because, "If you're a Chicagoan, Rio's budget deficit does not matter."

They also say 21 of Athens' 22 Olympic venues remain unused.

It appears the latest victim of recessionomics is the ambition to host the world's second most important sporting event.

ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP/Getty Images

The Olympics torch for the 2010 winter games in Vancouver is officially supposed to evoke "the cool, crisp and modern lines that are left behind in the snow and ice from winter sports." But a lot of people are saying the 37-inch white torch, with crimped ends and twist in the middle, resembles a hand-rolled marijuana joint, especially when it's lit (and viewed in the horizontal position).

It doesn't help that Vancouver is a major marijuana-producing area. The Olympic torch has now been dubbed the Olympic Toke.

Photo: © VANOC/COVAN

Last week, I blogged that Andrei Lugovoi, prime suspect in the Alexander Litvinenko murder, is running for mayor of Sochi, the Black Sea resort town that will host the 2014 Winter Olympics. [Update: Looks like Lugovoi's out.] But Lugovoi's only one of the 25 fascinating characters (including some Passport favorites) running in what's shaping up to be one of the world's more interesting political contests.

Liberal opposition leader and political sex symbol Boris Nemtsov is running, and got ammonia thrown at him by pro-Kremlin hooligans a few days ago. Ex-KGB oligarch Alexander Lebedev is in the running, as is freemason lodge leader Andrei Bogdanov, who we last met when he was waging a high-profile beef with far-right leader (and Lugovoi's boss) Vladimir Zhirinovsky during his highly suspicious presidential run.

But there's more! Former Bolshoi ballerina Anastasia Volochkova is running, as is porn star Yelena Berkova, and local wrestling promoter Stanislav Koretsky. Then, of course, there's the guy who will most likely win, Anatoly Pakhomov from Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party.

A lot of these candidates have fairly minimal connections to Sochi, which doesn't seem to be a huge problem in Russian politics. Though the Communist Party's candidate did gripe about Lugovoi, "Maybe he vacationed here once.”

So why does every egomaniac in Russia want to be mayor of Sochi all of a sudden? First, the upcoming Olympics makes the race a perfect opportunity for self-promotion. Second, for the slightly more serious candidates, a recent upset in Murmansk, where a United Russia incumbent was defeated in a mayor's race by an independent candidate, has the Russian opposition sensing blood in the water. 

Has the financial crisis broken United Russia's seemingly invincible grip on Russia's regional politics? Let the games begin.

Photos: Getty Images

Russian MP Andrei Lugovoi, who is Britain's chief suspect in the murder of dissident ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko is considering running for mayor of Sochi, the Black Sea resort city that will host the 2014 Olympic Games.

Scotland Yard's prime suspect needled Britain last May, by attending a soccer game played by two British teams in Moscow. I have to imagining that attending an Olympics hosted by Lugovoi himself has to be a pretty infuriating prospect for the U.K.

 Alexey SAZONOV/AFP/Getty Images

It looks like the Sochi games might be a somewhat more modest affair than planned:

The 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian city of Sochi will cost 15 percent less than originally anticipated as initial budget estimates exaggerated the projected cost, a top official said on Tuesday. [...]

Russian officials have warned that the country's budget deficit could reach around 8 percent of GDP in 2009. A deputy minister warned on Tuesday the economy would contract by 2.2 percent in 2009.

Yet to conduct the sports event on the balmy Black Sea coast, Russia needs to spend lavishly on upgrading Soviet-era infrastructure and building new facilities in the hitherto quiet mountain resort of Krasnaya Polyana.

The report said local authorities were recently forced to extend tender deadlines for Olympic-related construction contracts due to lack of interest from companies hit by financial difficulties.

Authorities also faced mounting difficulty in acquiring land necessary for construction of Olympic infrastructure in the southern Russian city of Sochi because owners were refusing to sell at prices offered by the government.

Doesn't seem very encouraging. But given all the ink and pixels that were spilled (including by some of us here) predicting that air pollution and protests would turn the Beijing Games into an embarassing catastrophe for China, I'd be cautious about predicting doom for Sochi quite yet.

ALEXEY NIKOLSKY/AFP/Getty Images