Chicago wins bid to host 2024 summer Olympics
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — On Tuesday, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach announced that Chicago will host the 2024 Summer Games.
The announcement thrilled Chicagoans, whose excellent architecture, first-rate food, cosmopolitan energy and indomitable spirit will finally command the world's undivided attention.
On Tuesday afternoon, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the White House to personally thank Chicago-born President Hillary Rodham Clinton for her crucial support, as did the country's most famous Chicagoan, former President and Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who congratulated Clinton in person at an emotional Rose Garden Press Conference.
"For the last six months, I've worked closely with the Rahm, Michael Schur, Leslie Knope, Oprah and the White House to make sure that the people of Chicago got the opportunity to showcase their city to the world," Obama said.
"Since January, my good friend President Hillary Clinton has led our efforts, fighting on even when everybody counted us out. At one point, Rahm even said, 'Fuck it Madame President, it's over. They're gonna give it to a bullshit city, like Los Angeles or Sochi.' But Hillary didn't give up hope. She kept working. It's a Windy City miracle, one worthy of the Chicago Cubs," Obama said.
Chicago's Olympic coup places a joyous exclamation mark at the end of long, grueling, and frequently humiliating 7-year struggle to host the summer games - one that seemed forever lost in 2009, when Chicago's then-mayor Richard Daley and Obama failed to win the 2016 games despite Obama's flying to Copenhagen to lobby the Olympic Committee in person.
In the end, the IOC spurned Obama's wooing, and instead opted to award the games to Rio de Janeiro, causing Republicans like failed GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump to jeer Obama's efforts, calling him "a loser" and "terrible negotiator."
But history has a witty way of salving unjust humiliations.
For instance, despite his villainy, cheating and chest-beating, Trump handily lost November's election to President Hillary Rodham Clinton by a stunning margin of 3 million votes.
Meanwhile, after beating Chicago, Rio De Janeiro's 2016 summer games proved disastrous, costing the IOC a record $1.53 billion, wracking up $35 million in unpaid debts, and unleashing U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte on unsuspecting Brazilians.
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. Undeserving victors never get the last laugh," said President Hillary Rodham Clinton at a Rose Garden press conference, grinning.
In other Olympic news, the IOC also announced that due to its state-sponsored doping scheme, Russia has been forbidden from hosting a winter or summer games until 2890.
