Final bid
October 2, 2009
The 121st International Olympic Committee Session at the Bella Center in Copenhagen in Denmark is set to choose a host for the 2016 Games on Friday. The four candidate cities, Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo are making final presentations to the hundred or so voting IOC members.
Each presentation is followed by a short question-and-answer session. The host city will be decided by what is expected to be a three-round voting process, with no city likely to win the required simple majority in the first round. The winner will be announced by IOC president Jacques Rogge in a globally televised ceremony scheduled to begin in the early evening.
Outsider Madrid
Spain's King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero are both campaigning for Madrid, although Rio and Chicago are considered the leading contenders. Tokyo is the only candidate city that has previously hosted the Olympics.
The bookmaker's favorite is Chicago, thanks in part to the arrival in Copenhagen of US President Barack Obama and his address to the IOC on behalf of his adopted hometown. A White House statement revealed he had already been lobbying IOC members from Washington.
Obama's personal intervention has made it even less likely that Madrid will win the Games, since Europe is due to host the Olympic Games in London in 2012 and the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia in 2014.
bk/Reuters/AP/dpa
Editor: Nancy Isenson