Now That The Game Is Over...

[aluz]

Agreed. Astute as usual, aluz.

That's exactly what Dick Pound said in that Chicago Tribune article. The others ganged up to make sure Chicago didn't get past the first round.

But you got to be in it to win it. Sitting on the sidelines won't do it.

BTW, congratulations to you as well. Thank you for conducting yourself so professionally here to me and to the others unlike a few others and they know who they are...

Baron,

And I still think the old men did it! You got to give it to them! JS and JH have a lot of people in their pocket.

Since I'm living in Europe, I'll probably be in London and definitely in Rio.

Maybe you get me a job in some bid committee now.

thanks,

[Cinderella]

Baron,

I totally agree and I would dare to say that the real battle was Rio vs Chicago and Rio won it by a landslide. The order of elimination hid the real dynamics behind this election. The truth is that Chicago failed to secure enough pledged votes to go through the first round - and we have always said that no city was free from a first round upset.

If you add to the elimination of Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid in this order to the actual vote counts, you will see that the prognosis done around here was not so far from the reality. Let's look in retrospective about what we have discussed here before the vote.

1. Madrid had no chance due to continental rotation, but Samaranch's power would get them a lot of first round votes.

2. Tokyo was too close after Beijing and it lacked enthusiasm. It was considered a dark horse that might profit from the early elimination of the favourites.

3. Chiago and Rio were the real players and one of the was likely to win, but if they failed to secure enough pledged votes one of them could be out in the first round. All the predictions, or most, did not consider the possibility of them being out so soon.

We had a lot of theories about how Chicago and Rio would collect the votes from a Madrid or Tokyo elimination. We had no theory for Rio or Chicago being out first, which forced by continental rotation all the votes to be trasferred to the remaining city.

So, what really happened was that after the first round, with Madrid winning at the expense of Chicago, Madrid did stop. It got only 4 votes out of 44 released in the following 2 rounds. So, Tokyo and Madrid were never really in play and we came very close to a 2nd round win - only 2 votes shy. I bet that if Chicago was not eliminated so soon they will put up a fight.

This election was Chicago vs Rio indeed. It was a 3rd round election won in the 1st round.

Well, PLENTY of people stated that Madrid will be out in the 1st round, either with JAS effect or not. I don't know why are you designing the race to your own convenience. Chicago has been over-confident and it has been punished. That's all.