Routledge Press published Tom Tresser’s book, No Games Chicago: How We A Small Group of Citizens Derailed the City’s 2016 Olympic Bid. Get all the details here.
At around 11am local time on October 2, 2009, at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, the International Olympic Committee met to decide the future of Chicago.
They were meeting to decide which of four Finalist Cities would host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
The four cities were Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, and Tokyo.
Through a series of votes, the first city to receive a majority of those present and voting would be awarded the right to host the Games. There were 94 members present that morning.
Chicago received 18 votes on the first round and was eliminated from the process.
The Chicago 2016 Committee raised $92 million to prosecute and promote the bid and was backed by three of the most powerful men in America: Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, and President of the United States Barack Obama.
The common wisdom (and odds in Las Vagas) had Chicago as the favorite to win the 2016 Summer Games.
The elimination of Chicago on the first vote was a shock, to say the least.
What happened?
The pursuit of an Olympic Games is a costly, corrupt, and wasteful affair. The bidding process runs at the highest levels of government and is run by the most powerful people in public life. It is standard operating procedure for a city’s bid to be backed by its business elites – enormously wealthy (mostly White) men – and backstopped by the local media and nonprofit eco-system.
This is the story of a small group of people with no office, budget, staff, or active collaborators who worked together to defeat those forces and, in so doing, saved Chicago from a disaster on the order of the Great Fire of 1871.
during our fight?
