What's Happening in Chicago

As the vote for the host city of the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games heads down the final stretch, excitement in Chicago and around the country is brewing at an all-time high.

And Chicago is relying on its impressive star power to help support its bid to host its first Games. The A-list begins right at the top with the president of the United States, Barack Obama, who adopted Chicago as his hometown and is a former U.S. senator from the state of Illinois.
 
Add in First Lady Michelle Obama, a Chicago native and graduate of the city's Whitney Young High School, and of course, there is TV star Oprah Winfrey, who has made Chicago home to her ever-popular talk show.

All three will be in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Friday, where the International Olympic Committee will vote on the host city for the 2016 Games. The fanfare comes as Chicago awaits the final results of its bid battle against Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro.

There will be hundreds of vote-watching parties, especially in Chicago, where festivities will be held along the Magnificent Mile of Michigan Avenue, Daley Plaza and Millennium Park.

"It's nerve-wracking, it's exciting," said Scott Myers, executive director of World Sports Chicago and a member of the Chicago 2016 team in Copenhagen this week. "You're very, very excited about the possibilities, what could happen if we're fortunate enough to win."

The stress level is also high. Myers can't stop thinking about the possibilities, even when he leaves work and comes home.

Said Myers: "I came home one night and (my wife) said, 'I can't wait until (the Olympic vote) is over. All anybody wants to talk about are the Olympics.' "

Early Friday morning, three-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Rowdy Gaines will be in Daley Plaze in downtown Chicago to emcee the city's largest IOC vote-watching event. Gaines, a fundraiser for USA Swimming and Olympic TV analyst at ESPN and NBC, spent summers during his childhood with his dad in Lincoln Park, just a few blocks from Wrigley Field. His sister still lives in the suburbs.

"I think Chicago is one of the best cities in the world," said Gaines, who will be joined by former Chicago Bulls star Scottie Pippen at the event.
 
At precisely 11:57 a.m. Chicago time, the IOC will announce the host city for 2016, less than two hours after the first round of voting will eliminate one of the four final cities. Fans across the nation (and around the globe) can follow live coverage of the day's activities from Copenhagen on www.teamusa.org.

The four-city battle has been intense, and each city has been pulling out all of the stops, flying in more heads of state and top athletic stars (Rio has flown in soccer great Pele) than perhaps a United Nations meeting or an Olympic and Paralympic Games themselves.
 
"This is, by far, the strongest lineup of cities," said Gaines, who predicts only a couple of votes will decide the winner. "It's going to be people cheering and people in tears. There is no in-between."

For the losing cities, Gaines said, "It will be a difficult pill to swallow."

Everyone involved with Chicago's bid is trying to stay optimistic.

Paralympic swimmer and Chicago resident Melissa Stockwell will be at Daley Plaza all morning, hoping the Windy City will win the bid. She expects the gathering to be huge, and with a lot of support for the Paralympic Games as well.

"Being a part of some of the 2016 events, I have been extremely impressed of the inclusion that the Paralympics have gotten with the Olympics," she said. "Everything I've been to, it's not just the 2016 Olympics, it's the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics in Chicago. It has been broadcast very widely that it's not just the Olympics. So if it does win tomorrow, it will be great just to learn a lot more about the Paralympics and the Paralympic athletes and just the hard work they go through also."

The two biggest gymnastics stars from the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games will be anticipating the vote in different hemispheres. All-around Olympic gold medalist Nastia Liukin joined a large handful of other U.S. Olympic and Paralympic gold medalists and other current and former athletes who traveled to Copenhagen to support the vote.

Meanwhile, balance-beam Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson will be in Chicago. Coca-Cola, which has been a sponsor of the Olympic Games since 1928, is throwing a private party Friday afternoon and evening at Millennium Park, whether Chicago wins the bid or not. The "Celebrate the Spirit" program will feature several Olympians, including Johnson. That evening, Johnson-also a "Dancing With the Stars" champion-will be performing in a dance exhibition at Millennium Park, win or lose.
 
Virtually every national sports headquarters will hold their own watching parties, including U.S. Soccer, which is based in Chicago.

The U.S. Olympic Committee's three training centers at Colorado Springs, Chula Vista, Calif., and Lake Placid, N.Y., will host viewing parties for athletes, USOC staffers and National Governing Board staffers.

In Chula Vista, the OTC expects about 150 people to show up for a breakfast at its AT&T Center, including athletes, alumni and the general public. They'll have five TVs set up to watch the IOC vote and-if all goes as hoped for-athletes and OTC director Tracy Lamb will speak.

At the U.S. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., where the USA Canoe/Kayak National Championships are being held this weekend, the public is invited to join a watch party that will also include athletes from the USA and four other countries.
 
At the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, Okla., a training site for Paralympians and Olympians, community members and UCO staffers will join athletes at a viewing party. Individual national governing bodies are hosting viewing parties in Indianapolis (swimming, gymnastics, and track and field) and Anaheim, Calif. (volleyball).

In the nation's capital, a group of about 15 U.S. Olympic alumni will gather in the City of Chicago's Washington, D.C. office to watch the live coverage on computers and TVs. They're meeting in the morning for coffee and bagels, and for lunch, Chicago native Arlene Limas is having the city's famous Al's Beef brought in.

"We want to be a part of it and we want to be together one way or another when the bid is announced," said Limas, a 1988 Olympic champion in taekwondo.

Anticipation for the 2016 vote has spread down to Indianapolis, about 200 miles away, where USA Gymnastics will host a watch party for its employees and athletes Friday. USA Gymnastics has been working with World Sport Chicago on a number of events.
 
"Anytime you get the chance to compete at an Olympics in your own country, it has special significance,'' said USA Gymnastics president Steve Penny. "There will be a great deal of excitement for everyone at USA Gymnastics.''

U.S. Soccer, already a player on the international stage, stands ready to expand its activities with a successful Chicago bid. Same for the Chicago Fire, a Major League Soccer team, and the Chicago Red Stars, a Women's Professional Soccer team that has six Olympians on its roster and has already worked with Chicago 2016 on a number of events.

"I think there's an excitement through the whole city, including the sports teams," said Red Stars forward Lindsay Tarpley, who won Olympic gold medals with the U.S. team in Athens and in Beijing.  "Being a part of the Olympics is the greatest achievement and accomplishment I've ever done. To have it in your city would be a great thing."

U.S. Soccer, which joined forces with the Fire to host a couple of World Cup qualifying matches at the Fire's Toyota Park and at the larger Soldier Field, would look to do even more events in connection with Chicago should the city win the bid.
 
"Having the Olympics here in 2016 would showcase to the rest of the world what we already know-Chicago is a world-class city with the ability to put on impressive international events," said Neil Buethe, senior manager of communications for U.S. Soccer. "U.S. Soccer has had a long-standing relationship with the city of Chicago, and we're always looking forward to holding events here in the future. It's not a fluke that we play some of our biggest and most crucial matches here in Chicago."

Perhaps the highest levels of anxiety and anticipation will come in Park City, Utah, the home of USA Team Handball.
 
If Chicago wins the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games bid, the U.S. team handball teams will gain automatic qualification as the host country. The last time the U.S. had either handball team in the Olympic Games was the Atlanta 1996 Games, again because of the host country exemption. If Chicago does not win its bid, Team USA could still qualify for the London 2012 Olympic Games if the United States wins the 2011 Pan American Games or a second-chance tournament.

Team handball peaked in the United States 13 years ago at the time of the Games in Atlanta, Pastorino said, but has been in steady decline since then.
 
"We're trying to build a grass-roots program," he said. "The build-up to Atlanta ... represented the high point for handball in the USA."
 
"It means as much to us as any Olympic governing body," said Steve Pastorino, general manager of USA Team Handball. "It (a successful bid) would be a shot in the arm that gives us a tangible goal."
 
So huge is this for USA Team Handball that it might even move.
 
Pastorino said it is a real possibility that the organization would relocate from Park City to Chicago. Already, the national handball championships were held in suburban Elgin, Ill., in May. The women's national handball championship team is from suburban Oswego.
 
"The eyes of the world would be on Chicago from October 2009 until 2016,'' said Pastrorino, a graduate of Northwestern University in the Chicago suburb of Evanston. "Why not be in the middle of it?'' 

Amid all the bustle around Chicago, Pastorino and others at USA Team Handball await that "shot in the arm." The organization has a seven-year plan to put together its 2016 Olympic rosters, including identifying and training athletes who may currently be as young as 14.
 
"Once again, it makes our sport more relevant and a part of the Olympic movement," Pastorino said.

The national handball team is just one piece of a complex athletics and education system that would benefit from Chicago 2016. World Sport Chicago, a nonprofit group created two years ago to serve inner-city youth through a series of fitness camps and clinics utilizing current and past Olympians as speakers and clinicians, intends to expand to 50 other cities in the next seven years if Chicago gets the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. If not, there likely wouldn't be such a big expansion.

Mayor Richard M. Daley, knows how much winning the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games would mean to Chicago on so many levels. He and the city's leaders have worked tirelessly to win this bid. Last month he played an instrumental role in winning unanimous support from the city's aldermen to financially support Chicago's bid, which he hopes boosts the IOC's view of the city's bid.

Daley also joined U.S. Olympic Committee, city and state representatives earlier this month in dedicating a field house and Olympic-themed playground on Chicago's South Side in honor of four-time Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens. In addition, Daley was part of a large 2016 Chicago bid contingent who came to the White House last month to promote the city and the Games.
  
The Chicago Public Schools has held several events for its students with former Olympians who were CPS graduates. Many of the World Sport Chicago camps were held at Chicago Park District facilities.

 "I'd love to see it there," said two-time Olympic swimming medalist Christine Magnuson, who grew up in suburban Tinley Park and was a speaker at a World Sports Chicago swimming event in August. "I think it would be an amazing experience."

Now all Magnuson and everyone else involved with Chicago's bid can do is sit and wait.

Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc. Paul D. Bowker is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of any National Governing Bodies. Chrös McDougall contributed to this report.

Tags: Arlene Limas, Barack Obama, Chicago 2016, Chicago 2016, Melissa Stockwell, Melissa Stockwell, Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Rowdy Gaines, Rowdy Gaines, Scott Myers, Steve Pastorino, USA Team Handball, World Sport Chicago