A top man in its corner

Obama could boost Chicago

While the Chicago bidders made a big hit with a video greeting from president-elect Barack Obama at last week's general assembly of European Olympic committees in Istanbul, the Windy City still has lots of ground to make up before the International Olympic Committee chooses its host city for the 2016 Summer Games next autumn in Copenhagen.

Chicago ranked third behind Tokyo and Madrid in the IOC's evaluation of the four contenders (Rio de Janeiro is the other) and bid committee chairman Patrick Ryan conceded that Obama's hometown trails those cities on the technical checklist.

Still, a persuasive chief of state is a huge advantage, as Tony Blair was for London for 2012 and Vladimir Putin for Sochi for 2014. Its stadium issues aside, New York's 2012 bid suffered because President Bush was so unpopular with the Eurocentric membership that he would have been a liability as a pitchman at the IOC session in 2005, where Blair wooed the candidates in French, as did Putin last year.

Obama may not parler francais (or any foreign language, to his admitted embarrassment) but his taped presentation was a big hit at the EOC meeting. If he'll make it in person at the IOC session, he could be the difference if the vote is close, as Putin was for long shot Sochi.

"Nothing would be as dramatic as him turning up in Copenhagen," said Irish member Patrick Hickey. Especially if Obama can say something more elaborate than "bonjour.'

"Mr. Obama is popular and good at speeches," acknowledged Japanese Olympic committee board member Tomiaki Fukuda, "so things could get tough for Japan."

Tarnished gold

The doping fallout from the 2000 Games never seems to end for the US track team. In a "Real Sports" interview with Bryant Gumbel airing tonight on HBO, disgraced sprinter Tim Montgomery admits that he took both testosterone and human growth hormone before he won a gold medal as a prelim runner with the 4x100 relay in Sydney. "I have a gold medal that I'm sitting on that I didn't get with my own ability," says Montgomery, who never tested positive but was banned for two years after being named in the BALCO case and now is serving a jail term for check fraud and heroin trafficking. That admission might cost his relay mates (Maurice Greene, Jon Drummond, Bernard Williams, Brian Lewis, Kenny Brokenburr) their medals, just as Antonio Pettigrew's did his partners on the 4x400. At the least, both the IOC and USOC want Montgomery to give his medal back. Marion Jones, Montgomery's ex-girlfriend, already has gotten the results of the women's 4x100 and 4x400 wiped out by her doping admission . . . He may have been voted out of the US Senate and possibly is headed for prison, but Ted Stevens still will have his name on the Olympic and Amateur Sports Act that created the modern US Olympic Committee. The USOC still was little more than a glorified travel agency in 1978 when Stevens sponsored the legislation that put all Olympic sports under its umbrella, ended the feuding that had plagued amateur athletics for decades and helped put the Americans back atop the medal table at the Summer Games.

Room for rugby?

Rugby (the seven-a-side version) moved one step closer to returning to the Olympics after being added to the Pan American Games slate for 2011. The sport is one of seven (including baseball, softball, golf, karate, squash, and roller sports) being considered for two spots on the 2016 program, which will be decided next October. Rugby, a favorite of IOC president Jacques Rogge, who played internationally for Belgium, hasn't been on the slate since 1924, when the Americans demolished the French for the gold medal in Paris, were booed during the award ceremony, and had to be guarded by police on their way out . . . With top domestic runner Ryan Hall in next year's field, the Boston Marathon could well have its first American men's champion since Greg Meyer in 1983, when the race wasn't offering prize money. The 26-year-old Stanford grad, who finished 10th in the Olympics, is the real thing - he's already the fastest US-born marathoner (2:06:17) and he's been fifth and seventh in London. "What is done in Boston lives for all time," says Hall . . . Dara Torres isn't hanging up the Speedo just yet. America's most famous swimming mom says she'll likely stick around at least for next summer's biennial world meet in Rome if she stays healthy. "Why stop? You're still improving," US coach Mark Schubert told her. Torres, who won three Olympic silver medals in Beijing at 41, recently had surgery on her left thumb after ripping ligament from bone when she slammed her hand into the wall during her last race at the Games.

Still in there fighting

He hasn't won a medal yet, but flyweight Rau'Shee Warren is staying amateur, trying to become the first US boxer to compete in three Olympics. Warren, who was the youngest member of the entire American team in Athens, still is only 21, and the world champ is powerfully motivated after two first-match losses at the Games. Also staying amateur is 20-year-old superheavy Michael Hunter, who won the trials but lost in the Olympic regional qualifiers. Best news for USA Boxing, though, is that it's finally off US Olympic Committee probation after six years and a top-to-bottom governance restructuring. Now to beef up that worst-ever medal count . . . You could have made a bundle betting on the Alpine daily double - that Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller both would make a World Cup slalom podium. But that's what happened at the most recent stop in Finland, where Vonn won her first gold in the event and Miller's silver was his first medal in four years. "Mind-boggling," exulted Vonn, who now has won every discipline except giant slalom. If the knee she bruised in practice last week comes around, the defending Cup champion (and current leader) will get a shot at the elusive GS in Aspen Saturday . . . Odds are that no US women's figure skater will qualify for next month's Grand Prix final in South Korea. With only this weekend's NHK Trophy in Tokyo remaining, Rachael Flatt is clinging to the final spot, but either Mao Asada or Yukari Nakano figures to vault past her. Jeremy Abbott is solid on the men's side, and Johnny Weir and Wakefield's Stephen Carriere, who'll both compete in Tokyo, have good chances . . . The Pacific Northwest has taken over as skating's hotbed. The Seattle suburb of Everett set a record of nearly 30,000 tickets sold for last month's Skate America, breaking the mark set by Spokane, which holds the attendance record for the US championships. The eastern Washington city again will host the nationals in 2010, which will determine the Olympic team for Vancouver.

Shooting stars

The US women's ice hockey team finally ended its silver streak at the Four Nations Cup in Lake Placid by knocking off the Canadians in a shootout for its third title but first since 2003. The Americans, coached by Harvard's Katey Stone, had been second four straight times before Erica McKenzie scored in the fourth round . . . The Tornado class (two-person catamaran) has been scrubbed from the Olympic sailing lineup for 2012, leaving the program without a multihull event. And the Yngling class will be replaced by the Elliott 6-meter as the women's keelboat . . . The next Ronda Rousey could be Kayla Harrison, the Ohio native who trains with the Olympic medalist at Jim Pedro's judo club in Wakefield. Harrison won the junior world title in Thailand, joining Rousey and Hillary Wolf as the only American female champions . . . Don Bowden, the first American to break the four-minute mile, will be inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame next month. He'll be joined by quarter-miler Bill Carr, a double gold medalist at the 1932 Olympics, by former world record-holder Bernie Wefers, a three-time US champion in the 100 and 200, by Johnny Gray, the four-time Olympian and 1992 bronze medalist in the 800 meters, and by Jimmy Carnes, the first president of The Athletics Congress, USA Track & Field's precursor. Bowden, a 1956 Olympian, was still a Cal undergrad when he went sub-4:00 the following year . . . John McNally hasn't medaled at five Games, but the 52-year-old shooter wins the gold as the oldest non-Paralympic athlete to be sanctioned by the US Anti-Doping Agency. McNally, who tested positive twice this year for banned diuretics, was given a six-month suspension.

Material from Olympic committees, sports federations, interviews, and wire services was used in this report.