Eyes Will Be On Rio in 2016

If you look at a world map that shows the locations of past Olympic Games there are two obvious blank regions, Africa and South America. With this in mind you had to think that Rio de Janiero was a good shot at winning the right to host the 2016 Olympic Games.

That is how it turned out following the votes in Copenhagen. What came as a surprise was that Chicago were dumped in the first round. Even Barak Obama making a plea for his city to win the games was not enough. Chicago received just 18 votes in round one, Tokyo 22, Rio 26 and Madrid 28.

Australia’s high ranking IOC member Kevin Gosper suspects that the Asian delegates got together to eliminate Chicago.

In round two voting Tokyo were next to go. This was a city with the least hometown support and considering the games were in Asia just last year that counted against them. The votes were Madrid 46, Rio 29 and Tokyo 20.

Now it came down to a race between Madrid and Rio. Even though there is not a rule against awarding the same continent consecutive games in practice that is how it works. With that being said you had to think Rio would come out on top, even though Madrid had a solid round two vote.

The final round saw Rio win easily with 66 votes to Madrid’s 32.

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