2016 Summer Olympics - Chicago

Chicago Submits Application to Host 2016 Summer Olympics
Chicago announced that it "has formally entered" the competition to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. The USOC and Mayor Richard Daley each sent letters to the IOC, "officially submitting" the city as the U.S. applicant, according to the Chicago Tribune.

If any U.S. venue is sports-crazy enough to host an Olympic Games, it is Chicago. And especially after New York's failure to land the 2012 Summer Games (London has them) and Atlanta's rough Olympic road in 1996, Chicago deserves a high level of consideration from the IOC to represent the U.S.

"We know the next two years will require hard work on all our parts, but it's a great opportunity to educate America and the world about the Olympic movement and the spirit it brings to our city," Daley said.

Asked whether Chicago's bid would be hurt by potential Chicago Transit Authority service cuts, Daley said Olympic host cities have been able in past years to get federal funds for transportation and security. Chicago's bid is backed by a package of public and private guarantees, the newspaper said.

The IOC is expected to announce a full list of bid locations on Sept.14 with a winner to be chosen on Oct. 2, 2009. Other cities likely to declare their candidacies include Rio de Janeiro; Madrid; Tokyo; Doha, Qatar; and Baku, Azerbaijan, the newspaper said.

Koreans Advance to Olympics

South Korea qualified for the Olympics in men’s gymnastics on Wednesday.

The Korean teams earned a trip to Beijing by placing eighth at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships Tuesday in Stuttgart, Germany. The Koreans totaled 360.400 points as team in six qualifying events, defeating some of the world’s strong rivals, including France ㅡ which finished with 359.900 points ㅡ Italy and Canada.

It is the fifth straight time the Koreans have qualified for the Olympics in men’s gymnastics. That gives Korea it’s longest string of Olympics berths in the sports since its gymnastics team made its first Olympic appearance in 1964 in Tokyo.

The Koreans have now qualified for every Olympics since the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Spain.

The six-member national team went through difficult competitions against international rivals, such as Germany and Spain in qualifications.

Despite a favorable match schedule, three Koreans struggled with their performances at the beginning. Some made mistakes in the pommel horse by touching their hands on the ground, causing them to lose points. They also had less-than-satisfying performances on the rings.

But after earning 62.875 points in the vault, the Koreans gained momentum with strong performances on the parallel bars (63.650), which was regarded as a strong event for Korea, helping the team to finish with 360.400 points en route to advancing to the final round of the 2008 Olympics.

Yang Tae-young, who was deprived of a golden medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics after some controversial decisions, made great contributions.

Despite making some mistakes by touching the ground in the pommel horse, he had a strong performance on the parallel bars, recovering the previous faults to stir up the morale of the team.

Korea’s remaining five gymnasts also contributed to their team’s success, despite being plagued by injuries.

The Olympic champions will be crowned in Beijing next year by calculating scores from six categories ㅡ floor exercise, horizontal bar, parallel bars, pommel horse, rings and vault.

The Koreans hope to be raked fifth or higher entering the Olympics.

China took first at the Artistic World Championship with 374.275 points, followed by Japan with 370.725 and Germany with 364.350.

The U.S., Russia, Romania, Spain, France, Italy, Canada and Bulgaria also won tickets for the final rounds of the Beijing Olympics.

Chinese games - 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing

With less than a year before the start of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the world community has trained its gaze on China. The Games present an opportunity to pressure that nation's communist government to correct some of its worst abuses in the areas of human rights, press freedom and individual expression.

Along with reports on the pageantry of the Games, attention should be lavished on China's atrocious human rights record. This includes the despicable practice of forced abortions that result from the nation's one-child policy. Reliable reports abound of women being taken from their homes and made to undergo abortions, even in the ninth month of pregnancy.

This is a good time, too, to highlight China's abuse of dissident voices. In a case all too familiar in China, self-trained lawyer Chen Guangcheng was sentenced to more than four years in prison in 2006 for bringing attention to abuses by family planning officials in Shandong Province in eastern China. Chen, who is blind, is being held in isolation from other prisoners. Villagers at his trial allegedly were tortured into testifying against him.

The human rights group Amnesty International is working to bring attention in the run-up to the Games to such cases, as well as China's broad employment of the death penalty without a fair trial and its stranglehold on free expression and Internet access.

Meanwhile, pledges made to improve press freedoms remain unfulfilled. China said it would lift restrictions it places on foreign media until the Games end next August. But according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Chinese journalists continue to be harassed, threatened and jailed. Foreign reporters say China regularly disregards even the temporary rules it put in place to give international media a freer hand.

China's misdeeds don't just harm its own citizens, as a sobering New York Times report on the country's massive pollution problems pointed out last week. Just as industrialized nations are coming to realize the peril of unabated carbon emissions, China could overtake the United States as the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases as soon as the end of this year.

The government has been lax on pollution control to avoid exerting drag on the country's red hot economic engine. Companies have freely dumped chemical waste into surface water, releases of which recently sent toxins flowing into Russia. The sun is perpetually darkened by pollution over some Chinese cities, and large swaths of Chinese coastline are devoid of marine life. Children suffer high rates of lead poisoning, and disease caused by pollution is a leading cause of death.

What's more, China's rapid development is run mostly on dirty, obsolete coal technology.

Despite the far-reaching power of China's strict authoritarian government, experts say the pollution might be impossible to control because of a thorny Catch-22 . China's growth is fueled by exports made cheap in part by laissez-faire pollution regulation. Slowing that growth could foment social and industry unrest that would threaten Communist Party rule. The same could result from unmitigated environmental degradation.

The international pre-Olympics spotlight also has illuminated Beijing's investments in Africa, including in Sudan, where that government is funding a genocidal war in Darfur.

Recent recalls of lead-poisoned toys, adulterated pet foods, toxic toothpaste and dangerous tires have awakened Americans to the hazards that go with saving money on cheaply made Chinese goods. To that add flagrant copyright piracy to the issues China must confront head-on.

This is not the time to let China bask in the pride of its Olympics coup, but to use the global attention to make it clean up its act.

www.chron.com

Eleven cities bid for Youth Olympics

ATHENS, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Eleven cities have submitted bids to host the first edition of the Youth Olympics in 2010, designed to shore up dwindling support for the Olympic movement, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said on Monday.
With the average age of television viewers of the Olympics increasing and youngsters turning away, the IOC has said it needs to change to secure its survival.
For athletes aged 14-18, the first summer Games will take place in 2010 and the inaugural winter edition two years later.
The candidate cities for 2010 are Algiers, Athens, Bangkok, Belgrade, Debrecen, Guatemala City, Kuala Lumpur, Moscow, Poznan, Singapore and Turin, the IOC said in a statement.
The first host city will be decided next February.