The Torch Is Passed

Au revoir, CBC. Bonjour TSN, Rogers Sportsnet and CTV.
Tucked among the many retrospectives aired tonight during CBC's final telecast from the Beijing Games was a tribute to CBC's Olympic coverage over the years. With images from Tokyo 1964 all the way to this week, it almost played like a farewell concerto.
As most of you no doubt know, CBC's grip on Olympic rights ended this evening. When the five-ring circus opens for business again in less than 18 months — yes, Vancouver, that's how close the 2010 Winter Games are now — you'll see broadcast coverage presented by a CTV Globemedia/Rogers consortium that most prominently features TSN, CTV and Sportsnet. They'll be back two years later to do it all over again in London for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
We've said it before but it bears repeating once more. While many across our land have lobbed bombs (and justifiably so, at times) in the CBC's direction for some of its bungles in recent years, its Olympic work is generally worthy of our acclaim. They took it to a new level in Beijing, presenting the first full high-definition Games and offering Canadians a wealth of viewing options online.
Tonight's tribute video featured a number of CBC voices we've come to know so well over the years including, interestingly enough, Brian Williams and Chris Cuthbert, now CBC alumni who will be back on the Olympic job in Vancouver. Maybe their appearance was a subtle way of passing the broadcast torch to their competition.
Beijing 2008 introduced us to some new Olympic TV faces, including Diana Swain and Ian Hanomansing — two anchors brought over from CBC's news side who acquitted themselves admirably. It'll be interesting to see if some of the CBC talent, both new and old, employed at the Olympics over the years might find a home with the other guys from now on.
The word is CBC intends to push hard to regain Olympic rights in 2014, the next Games still available (in Sochi, Russia). If Chicago wins the 2016 Summer Olympics, those broadcast rights figure to become much more pricey.
That's a story that still remains to be told. For the CBC, though, it's farewell to the Games.
We'll see soon enough how much they'll be missed. And if and when they'll be back.

And Then There Were Four ...

It's one power-packed final four in the race to win the bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Yes, the flame hasn't even been lit yet in Beijing (Aug. 8, 2008 being the big date there), and we're already talking about a Games eight years down the road. But the International Olympic Committee has settled into a routine of awarding its big show seven years out and for 2016 than means, well, a vote in October of next year in Denmark.
That final four? Tokyo, Madrid, Chicago and Rio de Janeiro.
A fifth candidate was almost added but IOC president Jacques Rogge said a highly regarded bid from Doha, Qatar, was dismissed because organizers there wanted to hold the Games in October to avoid summer's searing heat.
Now, we all know the road to winning a Games takes many twists and turns along the way and the lobbying gets fierce, to say the least. So it's probably foolhardy to even attempt to predict a winner this far out. But some thoughts to consider ...
We'd suggest Rio might be the politically correct pick, being that the Olympics have never been held in South America. Soccer is righting a similar wrong in two years time by bringing its World Cup to South Africa. Is it time for the Olympic movement to perhaps start thinking along those lines? Rio, however, rated at the bottom of the IOC's technical rankings of the four bids (6.5). Yes, there's definitely some work to be done there.
While Tokyo wound up with the highest technical rating (8.4, just ahead of Madrid's 8.2), again, it's bidding to bring the Games to Asia eight years after Beijing. But Japan's capital last played host to the world in 1964 and perhaps the IOC voters will be persuaded that five decades is long enough to wait for another chance (even if Japan has held two Winter Olympics since, with Nagano the last host in 1998).
Madrid finished third in the race for the 2012 Olympics, which were awarded to London. The question being, will the IOC go to Europe for back-to-back Summer Games? Not that it hasn't happened before ...
Then there's Chicago, a distant third (7.0) in the technical rankings (which, we should all be reminded, don't mean everything in the end). By the time 2016 rolls around, it will have been 20 years since the U.S. last was home to the Summer Games (1996 in Atlanta). Don't forget, though, that U.S. television networks shell out the most money by far for Games broadcast rights. Many of the largest Olympic sponsors reside there, too.
In other words, never underestimate the power of the American dollar.