Obama will join Olympic bid team in Denmark

That would be First Lady Michelle Obama, not President Obama, signing on for next month's trip to Denmark to help Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympic Games.

"We are very pleased to confirm that First Lady Michelle Obama will be a lead member of the Official Chicago 2016 Delegation for the upcoming International Olympic Committee Session in Copenhagen, Denmark," said Patrick Ryan, Chicago 2016's chairman and CEO.

"As a lifelong Chicagoan, the First Lady is uniquely qualified to share with members of the IOC the passion and enthusiasm of our city for sport and the Olympic and Paralympic movement."

Just a few words of advice for the bid team. Don't make fun of the food of the competing countries, as strange as it may sound.

Why? Jacques Chirac, then the French president, in 2005 jokingly ripped British food on the eve of the vote for the 2012 Summer Games, reportedly saying: "You can't trust people who cook as badly as that."

His comments pulled him into a media firestorm and actually became an issue for several days. And that was before the days of Twitter.

So Chicagoans  -- hands off the culinary efforts of Madrid and Toyko. Kind of hard to diss tapas and miso soup, though.

-- Lisa Dillman

To walk the walk about supporting women, IOC must pick softball for 2016

(2008 Olympic medalists from Japan, the United States and Australia make the case for their sport at the end of the Beijing Olympic competition.  Associated Press / Amy Sancetta)

Next Thursday, when its executive board announces the two sports chosen for possible addition to the 2016 Summer Games, the International Olympic Committee has another chance to make a better statement about its support for female athletes than the one it issued after a Canadian judge said the IOC had discriminated by not allowing female ski jumpers into the 2010 Winter Olympics.

All the IOC has to do is pick softball, a women's Olympic sport that has been a solid addition to the program of four Summer Games before being dropped after 2008, partly because IOC member Jim Easton of the United States took the ethical high ground,  a position many IOC members rarely stake out.

More on that later.

The ski jumpers are appealing British Columbia Supreme Court justice Lauri Ann Fenlon's decision, which came down a month ago, but it seems unlikely they will win. 

Female ski jumpers to appeal court decision

A group of female ski jumpers will appeal a court decision that prevents them from competing at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.

According to the group's lawyer, the appeal will argue that the organizers of the Winter Games must abide by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"It cannot host events on Canadian soil that implement discrimination," Ross Clark said in a statement.

The British Columbia Supreme Court ruled last week the International Olympic Committee is discriminating against the ski jumpers by keeping them from the games. But the judge said the court did not have the power to order the sport be part of the the Olympics.

-- Debbie Goffa

Numbers game: IOC would be taxed without NBC revenues

Want to know why the International Olympic Committee is backing NBC in its dispute with the U.S. Olympic Committee over the U.S. Olympic Network?

 

It is pretty clear from the numbers in the IOC's 2008 tax filing.

 

Tripp Mickle of Sports Business Journal first posted information about the filing Tuesday. His story emphasized the IOC's $383.3 million profit on a record $2.4 billion revenue for the fiscal year that ended Dec. 31, 2008, noting it was 68% greater than the $228.6 million profit from the previous Summer Olympic year, 2004.

 

The revenue figure that struck me was $1.73 billion in global TV rights for the Beijing Olympics.

 

What the filing wasn't required to say is NBC paid $894 million of that -- a little more than half the total.

USOC words, actions, attitude do Chicago Olympic bid no favors

Since the April day in 2007 the U.S. Olympic Committee announced it had selected Chicago over Los Angeles as the U.S. candidate for the 2016 Summer Olympics, the USOC has done Chicago few favors.

In fact, USOC words and actions over the last year have possibly undermined Chicago's bid and made a mockery of the USOC mantra of an "unprecedented partnership" between the national Olympic committee and a bid city.

 

It began last October, when Peter Ueberroth, in his final public speech as USOC chairman, rebuked the arguments of International Olympic Committee members critical of the USOC's stance in a revenue sharing dispute with the IOC. Ueberroth also reminded everyone in no uncertain that the U.S. corporations still contribute more than 60%of IOC revenues.

 

Chicago 2016 had no advance warning of what Ueberroth would say, which was certain to offend some 2016 voters, no matter if  his points were valid.

The inside stuff: IOC letter to USOC on network dispute

The Chicago Tribune has obtained a copy of the letter sent by the International Olympic Committee to the U.S. Olympic Committee, in which the IOC advised the USOC to hold off on its announcement of a U.S. Olympic cable network.

The USOC chose to go ahead, which put the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid in an awkward position, as Kathy Bergen and I reported in Thursday's Tribune.

An image of the letter is located to the right (click on it to read). Below the jump is an official statement from the IOC, which echoes the strong criticism of the USOC leveled by IOC executive board member Richard Carrion of Puerto Rico and reported in the story.

Click on the thread for the official IOC statement.

Verbruggen on IOC-USOC money flap: Never a serious proposition from USOC

Over the past several months, I have blogged about the ongoing revenue-sharing dispute between the United States Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee.

Each time, I have taken the position that former USOC Chairman Peter Ueberroth was correct in taking a hard line about not reducing the USOC share. Sometimes, I have criticized the behavior of two people speaking out on the issue, former IOC member Hein Verbruggen of the Netherlands and current member Denis Oswald of Switzerland. (Oswald is one of three people negotiating for the IOC; the others are Gerhard Heiberg of Norway and Mario Vazquez Rana of Mexico.)

Not long ago, Verbruggen, who has called the USOC share "immoral,'' e-mailed to object to my characterization of him (and Oswald) as "intemperate'' and to contest my basic premise in all the Blogs:  that the USOC is entitled to and needs the revenue it receives by contractual obligation from both the IOC's global sponsorship (TOP) program (20 percent) and U.S. television rights (12.75 percent).

Verbruggen contended in his original e-mail that I had not given him adequate opportunity to explain his convictions in the issue. I wrote back that I had done so, immediately after his first "intemperate" statements a year ago in Greece, but that he had not answered my questions.

IOC member Cinquanta: Chicago the favorite

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Ottavio Cinquanta of Italy is unsparing in his praise of U.S. contributions to sport.

That is among the reasons why Cinquanta, an International Olympic Committee member and president of the International Skating Union, likes the Chicago bid for the 2016 Summer Games.

"To me, Chicago is the favorite,''  Cinquanta said Thursday. "Why? The dossier is excellent and, for me, yet again, it is a matter of the U.S. contribution to sport. The U.S. has given [the world] athletes, organization, television and innovation in competition.

"The candidatures are from cities, but the cities are in countries, and what Chicago's country has done for sport in general over the years is very important.''

Cinquanta said his IOC colleagues have been impressed by a change in U.S. attitude toward the world.

A plus for Chicago: IOC-USOC dispute has calmed

LAUSANNE,  Switzerland -- Chicago's Olympic committee certainly had to feel good about one question that wasn't asked after presenting its bid plans Wednesday to International Olympic Committee members.

The ongoing revenue-sharing dispute between the IOC and the U.S. Olympic Committee did not come up, according to IOC member Gerhard Heiberg of Norway, who has been involved for three years in negotiations on this issue.

To Heiberg, that means the members have accepted the agreement announced in late March for a new framework to the negotiations.

"I have not had any IOC member come to me and say, 'This was not right. You should have done it differently,' '' Heiberg said Thursday. "On the contrary, they have said it is fine that this has been put off until after the [2016 host city] election on Oct. 2 so it doesn't interfere, which is what I wanted to achieve.  I haven't had anybody talking to me negatively about this.''

 

The fractious negotiations had become a negative for Chicago's bid.

No second chances for rejected sports in Olympic program vote

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge cleared up the confusion (see my Monday Blog) over what will happen if the IOC members vote down one or both of the two sports that the IOC executive board recommends to join the Summer Games sports program.

Rogge said today that such a rejection in the Oct. 9 vote will not create an opportunity for one of the five other sports trying to get on the program.

"There cannot be a proposal for a third or fourth or fifth sport,'' Rogge said.

-- Philip Hersh