CHICAGO – After spending a day indoors quizzing Chicago officials about their bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics, a U.S. Olympic Committee inspection team began exploring the city Wednesday to see where some of the events would be held.\n“I think they’re very impressed with Chicago,” the city’s bid leader, businessman Patrick Ryan, said Tuesday before hosting a first-day wrap-up dinner at The Art Institute of Chicago.\nWednesday’s tour was to include existing venues and proposed sites where others would be built if Chicago is chosen to host the 2016 games.\nThe 11-member inspection team visited the McCormick Place convention center – which would host fencing, table tennis, rhythmic gymnastics and judo competitions – and stopped at the adjacent Hyatt Regency hotel for a bird’s-eye view of a proposed athletes’ village.\nFrom a room on the hotel’s 33rd floor, USOC officials looked out at balloons marking the athletes’ village, and a proposed outdoor dining area and private beach.\nTuesday’s bid-review session kicked off two days of events in which the city is strutting its stuff in an attempt to convince the USOC that Chicago – not Los Angeles – should be the American bidder.\nDemocratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama provided star power, lending his support in a videotaped message to the 11-member inspection team.\n“Chicago is more than just a city in the middle of America, Chicago is the heart of America,” the Illinois senator said.\nThe USOC will decide in April whether Chicago or Los Angeles will get to make a bid. Officials visited Los Angeles last week.\nThe International Olympic Committee will select the Olympic host in 2009. Other expected bidders are Madrid, Rio de \nJaneiro, Rome and Tokyo.\nChicago’s campaign to show its Olympic spirit is in full swing. The city’s nighttime skyline is lit with Olympic messages on buildings, and shirts bearing the city’s slogan – “Chicago 2016 – Stir The Soul” – are in stores.\nOn Wednesday, a single protester tried to heckle Olympic officials as they readied for their bus tour, shouting through a megaphone that the Olympics would displace the city’s poor.\nRyan said a key issue for USOC officials was to ensure the city chosen as the eventual American bidder can attract the international support needed to lure the Games.\n“There was good dialogue on that. ... I think we handled that well,” he said.\nLos Angeles is vying for its third Summer Olympics, having hosted the 1932 and 1984 games.\nEarlier Tuesday, Bob Berland, who won a silver medal in judo at the 1984 Olympics, said Chicago’s bid committee was well prepared.\n“We haven’t been caught off guard because we’ve done our homework,” said Berland, co-chair of the committee’s athlete advisory group.\nBusiness and civic leaders already have raised more than $30 million to finance Chicago’s Olympic effort and would have to pony up more if the city wins the United States’ bid and then is awarded the games.\n“The Chicago business community is four square behind our bid for the Olympic Games,” Mayor Richard M. Daley said in welcoming the USOC.\nChicago faces questions about its readiness. Unlike Los Angeles, Chicago would have to build many Olympic sites, including a stadium and an Olympic Village. But Chicago insists its Olympics would be concentrated mostly on the downtown lakefront, making it easier to get around than in sprawling Los Angeles.
Chicago plans to build a $366 million, 80,000-seat temporary stadium in a South Side park and a $1.1 billion lakefront athletes’ village. Ryan said plans for the stadium would be discussed Wednesday.\nOlympic officials got a look at one venue Tuesday when they met at Soldier Field, which would host the soccer competition. The inspection team arrived at the lakefront stadium sporting black evaluation-team parkas on a blustery, frigid morning.\nThe team camped out in a presentation room so they could spend the day reviewing the city’s bid. Soldier Field was adorned with the city’s signature Olympic logo – a torch with a flame in the shape of a skyline. Organizers also debuted a 3 1/2-minute promotional film that could be used to market Chicago’s bid to an international audience.\nAmong those on hand to support the bid was Bart Conner, a two-time gold medalist gymnast who began his sport as a child in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Ill. He said the compactness of Chicago’s proposed Olympics – with athletes living near most of the venues – is a real selling point.\n“This is huge,” he said.
