- posted on 09/02/2012 09:21:32This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 7:14 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
By CAROL E. LEE
White House senior adviser David Axelrod called Rio de Janeiro’s selection as the host city of the 2016 Olympic …
… Games a “breakthrough” Friday afternoon.
“It was always true that they were making a very strong bid. Latin America’s not had an Olympics, so this is a breakthrough in that regard, so it’s not terribly surprising. We always assumed that if it weren’t Chicago it would probably be Rio,” Axelrod told POLITICO.
Moments before, the top Obama aide had spoken with POLITICO about Chicago’s rejection in Denmark - declaring President Obama’s trip to Copenhagen was worth it.
“I think everybody understood that it was very competitive situation and they thought that it would be valuable for him to come, and he came on that basis. There certainly were no guarantees, and we didn’t go with any illusions that he was gonna come home with the prize,” Axelrod said.
Asked if the White House had expected Chicago to win, and if he was surprised by the decision, Axelrod said, “We didn’t know,” and said the politics of the International Olympic Committee was out of his league.
“As I said, the lobbying around the - you know I come from Chicago, so I’m used to intense politics, but nothing quite rivals apparently the politics around the IOC and getting these Olympic Games,” Axelrod said. “And you know, as I said the head of the former president of the Olympic Committee … was leading the bid for Madrid. That has to count for something. He’s been working with the committee for years. He knows all the members. I’m sure that that was a benefit to them, and all these countries made strong bids, so it is what it is. But I think the president would do it again if he had the opportunity.”