Final cut...

My posts are almost never short, but even so, this one will be short. I guarantee it. It's actually slightly out of date, and I apologize--I've been on vacation away from the internet so blogging wasn't high on the priority list. Anyway, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) narrowed down the list of possible candidate cities for the 2016 Olympic games to 4 cities.

• Rio de Janiero, Brazil: the Olympics have never been held in South America, and Rio showed it can hold a major sporting event by holding the Pan-American Games last summer
• Tokyo, Japan: in narrowing down the cities, Tokyo had the highest technical score. It may be hard to convince the IOC to bring the Games back to Asia for the second time in three Olympics
• Madrid, Spain: They went for a bid for the 2012 games, but lost to London. Like Tokyo, they may have trouble bringing the Olympics to Europe twice in a row
• Chicago, United States: Our hope for the 2016 games. It'll be 20 years since the last time the Olympics were in the US (Atlanta 1996), but Chicago has some major hurdles to get over

Now, for the teams that were dropped:

• Doha, Qatar: the Olympics have never been to the Middle East, and won't be until at least 2020 (for which Dubai and Doha will contend). Doha wanted to hold the games in October to avoid the desert heat, but the IOC thought that was too big of a change.
• Baku, Azerbaijan: This resort city on the Black Sea was a longshot at best. They may try for the games in 2020 or 2024
• Prague, Czech Republic: Another longshot, but this was partly in preparation for a later bid