Team Obama Pushes Chicago Olympics Bid

Updated at 9:07 a.m. Eastern.

In a hometown pitch for the world's biggest sporting event, President Obama lobbied Olympic leaders to give the 2016 Summer Games to Chicago, saying the U.S. "is ready and eager to assume that sacred trust."

The president and his wife, fellow Chicagoan Michelle Obama, put their capital behind an enormous campaign to win the Olympics bid. Never before had a U.S. president made such an in-person appeal.

"I urge you to choose Chicago," Mr. Obama told members of the International Olympic Committee.

"And if you do - if we walk this path together - then I promise you this: The city of Chicago and the United States of America will make the world proud," the president said.

Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo have been making their cases to the IOC for more than a year, but many of the IOC's members were believed to be undecided about which city they would vote for Friday. Some said they might not decide until after the cities made their final presentations in Copenhagen.

Chicago and Rio are the favorites, reports CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar. Rio urged the IOC's members to be bold by taking the games to South America for the first time, arguing that the continent offers a new frontier for the Olympic movement and that the games should not be the preserve of rich, developed countries.

"It is a time to address this imbalance," Silva said. "It is time to light the Olympic cauldron in a tropical country."

Both Obamas spoke on deeply personal terms about Chicago, the city at the center of the world's spotlight so many times, including in November when Barack Obama won the White House and stood proudly with his family. Mr. Obama held out the prospect of a Chicago games helping reconnect the United States with the world after the presidency of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

He pledged that the "full force of the White House" would be applied so "visitors from all around the world feel welcome and will come away with a sense of the incredible diversity of the American people."

"Over the last several years, sometimes that fundamental truth about the United States has been lost," Mr. Obama said. "One of the legacies, I think, of this Olympic Games in Chicago would be a restoration of that understanding of what the United States is all about and the United States' recognition of how we are linked to the world."

The president described Chicago as a place of diversity and warmth.

"Chicago is a place where we strive to celebrate what makes us different just as we celebrate what we have in common," he said. "It's a place where our unity is on colorful display ... It's a city that works from its first World's Fair more than a century ago to the World Cup we hosted in the nineties, we know how to put on big events."

For all the anticipation surrounding Mr. Obama's appearance in Copenhagen, his arrival at the IOC meeting was decidedly subdued.

The 100-plus committee members, who had already been warned not show bias during the presentations, sat silently as the Obamas walked into the Bella Center with the rest of 12-member Chicago delegation.

MacVicar reports that Michelle Obama gave a very personal story about her own father - who struggled with multiple sclerosis.

She told the IOC that her dad taught her as a girl how to throw punches better than the boys. She spoke of fond memories of growing up on the South Side of Chicago, sitting with her father and cheering on Olympic athletes.

She noted that her late father had multiple sclerosis, so she knows something about athletes who compete against tough odds.

"Chicago's vision for the Olympic and Paralympic movement is about so much more than what we can offer the games," she said. "It's about what the games can offer all of us - it's about inspiring this generation and building a lasting legacy for the next."
The president anchored the U.S. charm offensive.

He referenced his own election as a moment when people from around the world gathered in Chicago to see the results last November and celebrate that "our diversity could be a source of strength."

"There is nothing I would like more than to step just a few blocks from my family's home and with Michelle and our two girls welcome the world back to our neighborhood," Mr. Obama said. "At the beginning of this new century, the nation that has been shaped by people from around the world wants a chance to inspire it once more."

The presentations that all four cities were making represented the finishing line after years of hard work, lobbying, planning and hopes. They had 45 minutes and follow-up questions to sway and wow undecided IOC members, of which there were many after a long, close and at times acrimonious race.

The members who attended the meeting start voting electronically in a secret ballot at 5:10 p.m. (1510 GMT/11:10 a.m. EDT). The vote will take up to 30 minutes. Cities will be eliminated one-by-one until one secures a majority.

Tokyo followed the Chicago presentation, presenting itself as the best city for the athletes, safe and environmentally pioneering.

"Tokyo will show the world how a major metropolis can flourish without detriment to the environment," Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said.

Rio played up the wow factor of its fabulous scenery, with computer-generated bird's eye images of how venues would be spread across the city, with sailing in the shadow of Sugar Loaf mountain and volleyball on Copacabana beach. The governor of the central bank said Brazil's economic vibrancy should reassure IOC members, and the head of Rio state played down concerns over security.

But Rio's biggest selling point was that the IOC could ignore South America no longer.

"When you push the button today, you have the chance to inspire a new continent, make Olympic history," said Rio bid president Carlos Nuzman, who is also an IOC member. "Vote Rio, and we offer a gateway to 180 million passionate young people in South America."

An uncomfortable moment for Chicago came when an IOC member from Pakistan, Syed Shahid Ali, noted that going through U.S. customs can be harrowing for foreigners.

Mr. Obama responded that he wanted a Chicago games to offer "a reminder that America at its best is open to the world."

The high drama Friday will come when IOC president Jacques Rogge announces the name of the winner about an hour after the last votes are cast. He will break open a sealed envelope and declare which city has been awarded the games of the 31st Olympiad.

The winner gets huge prestige and billions of dollars in potential economic benefits, the losers just painful thoughts of what might have been.

Rogge doesn't vote and, as long as their cities haven't been eliminated, neither will members from Brazil, the United States, Spain and Japan. Three other members did not attend the session.

That left 95 voters in the first round, with more in subsequent rounds. In the event of a two-city tie in the early rounds, a runoff is held between the cities. If there is a tie in the final round, Rogge can vote or ask the IOC executive board to break the deadlock.

Ahead of the vote, only Tokyo seemed to have fallen out of the running. But otherwise, it was still too close to call between the beaches and bossa nova of Rio, the bustle and Lake Michigan waterfront of Chicago or the European elegance of Madrid. Everyone had reason to be hopeful, none reason to be sure.