I'm still happy, though, that I managed to make some money out of my prediction!!!!!
Anyway, just wondering if there's gonna be any event to mark the anniversary in Rio?
And, have disappointments faded with time further north of the Rio Grande?
Also, came across this:
1 year later no regrets from head of Chicago Olympics bid
On the 20th floor of the Aon Center, amid the largely empty offices, are a few souvenirs of the activity that filled the area a year ago.
The label on a September issue of Forbes magazine says the subscriber is "Joseph Ahern, Chicago 2016 Olympics.''
Visible through a window is a banner with the Daniel Burnham exhortation to make no small plans, which Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid adopted as a leitmotif.
Olympic memorabilia still hangs on some walls, including those in the office of Patrick Ryan, the former CEO of both Aon and the Summer Games bid committee that was headquartered on the 20th floor.
Chicago was the first of four 2016 finalists to be eliminated in the Oct. 2, 2009 vote of the International Olympic Committee, which would choose Rio de Janeiro as the host.
Ryan said he saw the handwriting for a Rio triumph on the wall exactly a month earlier, when the IOC evaluation commission issued its report, which glossed over Rio's crime and transportation issues.
"We knew when we started (in 2006) if Rio proved to (the IOC) it could handle the Games, they would go there, because the Games never have been in South America,'' he said.
Ryan has moved on and become, at age 73, boss of Ryan Specialty Group, an insurance company he launched last winter. But the posters of past Olympic Games in his new company's office seem like a sad, almost masochistic reminder of what always be missing: a poster of Chicago 2016.
"I'm not sad at all,'' Ryan said. "I have a very positive perspective on the bid.
"I keep telling myself this isn't a rationalization for not winning, but I truly believe the bid left a strong legacy.''
The clearest evidence is World Sport Chicago, created during the bid process to bring Olympic-related sports events to the city and to use Olympic sport and ideals in programs with the Chicago Public Schools and Chicago Park District.
Funded with about 10 percent of the $75.9 million raised privately to bankroll the bid, World Sport Chicago has current cash assets of $5.2 million, according to its CEO, Scott Myers. It has spent about $800,000 in assets this year but, Myers said, "we intend to do more aggressive fund-raising soon.''
There is a lesser-known legacy piece: The 2016 Fund for Chicago Neighborhoods. It used $2 million in funding from the bid committee for what would have been Olympic-related job training to attract $18 million in federal matching funds to help the unemployed in some neighborhoods that would have gained Olympic benefits.
Ryan said there is also a legacy in the venue and operations plan Chicago 2016 drew up, a plan that can be the foundation for a future Chicago bid "so they won't have to spend the money we did starting from scratch.''
Mayor Richard M. Daley, who once called bidding for the Olympics a con job but bought into the idea whole hog in 2006, blasted the IOC Wednesday at an international meeting, Beyond Sport, in Chicago.
"Money is the game of the Olympics. It's not about the Olympian,'' Daley said.
U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun told reporters last Friday he thought a U.S. bid for 2020 was "highly unlikely.'' Should the USOC choose to seek the 2022 or 2026 Winter Games, it might be two decades before Chicago or any other U.S. city makes a Summer Games bid.
Ryan, a billionaire who ran the bid without salary, spent "a few million dollars'' of his own money on a private jet for his relentless vote-seeking trips. He drove himself to exhaustion.
"I believed until the evaluation commission report came out we had a great opportunity to win,'' Ryan said. "After that, a blind man could have seen what the IOC wanted.''
To project an image of vitality during the bid, Ryan had worn contact lenses that drove his eyes crazy. He has eyeglasses now. And hindsight as clear as his vision of an Olympics in Chicago.
Chicago Tribune
