U.S. President Barack Obama has suggested that the votes for which cities host the Olympic Games "may be corrupt," according to Martyn Ziegler of the LONDON TIMES. Obama said that his country had learned that the IOC's votes for hosts cities are "a little bit cooked." His claim comes with L.A. bidding for the 2024 Games, "the vote for which takes place next year." Obama’s remarks will "focus attention once more on the IOC," with French prosecutors investigating a £1.55M ($2M) payment by the Tokyo 2020 bid committee to a company linked to the son of disgraced former IAAF President Lamine Diack. Obama spoke in a "wide-ranging interview" with New York magazine, in relation to Chicago’s failed bid for the 2016 Olympics. In '09 he traveled to Copenhagen in a "vain effort to get his adopted home city across the finishing line." He said, "A very effective committee had flown to Copenhagen to make their presentation, and Michelle [his wife] had gone with them, and I got a call, I think before the thing had ended but on fairly short notice, that everybody thought that if I flew out there we had a good chance of getting it and it might be worth essentially just taking a one-day trip. So we fly out there. Subsequently, I think we’ve learned that IOC’s decisions are similar to FIFA’s decisions: a little bit cooked. We didn’t even make the first cut, despite the fact that, by all the objective metrics, the American bid was the best. On the flight back, we already know that we haven’t got it" (LONDON TIMES, 10/4).
