By JOHN LEICESTER
AP Sports Writer
COPENHAGEN (AP) — The 2016 Games are going to Rio de Janeiro. Finally, South America gets an Olympics.
In a vote of high drama, the bustling Brazilian carnival city of beaches, mountains and samba beat surprise finalist Madrid, which got a big helping hand from a very influential friend.
out in the first round — in one of the most shocking defeats ever handed down by the International Olympic Committee. President Barack Obama’s last-minute hop to Denmark didn’t swing the games Chicago’s way. He came, saw, charmed but did not conquer.
Even Tokyo, which trailed throughout the tight race, did better — eliminated after Chicago in the second round. On Rio’s Copacabana beach, where the city will hold beach volleyball in 2016, the party was heading into the night. In Chicago, there was bewildered silence.
Rio spoke to IOC members’ consciences: the city argued that it was simply unfair that South America has never hosted the games, while Europe, Asia and North America have done so repeatedly.
“It is a time to address this imbalance,” Brazil’s charismatic president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, told the IOC’s members before they delivered their verdict. “It is time to light the Olympic cauldron in a tropical country.”
The final result was decisive: Rio beat Madrid by 66 votes to 32. Chicago got just 18 votes in the first round, with Tokyo squeezing into the second round with 22. Madrid was leading after the first round with 28 votes, while Rio had 26.
In the second round, Tokyo was eliminated with just 20 votes. Madrid got 29, qualifying it for the final round face-off with Rio, which by then already had a strong lead, with 46 votes.
Beating three rich, more developed nations that had all previously held the games represented a giant, morale-boosting coup for Brazil, an emerging nation bounding up the ranks of the world’s biggest economies but which still has millions of people living in poverty. Rio is known as much for its crime-ridden slums as for its stunning natural beauty.
But the lure of that untapped frontier proved too strong for the IOC.
Now, Africa and Antarctica are the only continents never to have been awarded an Olympics.
