Both popular and business support from the entire Chicago area is critical to the city’s bid to host the Olympic Games, Chicago 2016 President and CEO Patrick G. Ryan told Chicago Southland business and government leaders recently.

Speaking in Tinley Park at the annual luncheon of the Chicago Southland Convention & Visitors Bureau, Ryan, who is also the executive chairman of Aon, Inc., outlined the city’s proposals and offered a preview of the proposed Olympics sports venues in a sweeping A/V presentation.

Chicago is now officially one of eight cities worldwide bidding for the Games in 9 years. Reduction of that field to an expected four or five candidate cities by the International Olympic Committee will come next June with the selection of the host city in October 2009. Because of the importance of the United States to the Olympic movement by virtue of both the strength of its team and U.S. television rights and fees, Chicago is considered a virtual lock for candidate city status.

Ryan spoke of the process by which the U.S. Olympic Committee selected Chicago as the U.S. bid city for the Games of 2016.

“We went up against some pretty great cities—Houston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles—and we kicked their butts,” Ryan said to sustained applause. “They said it was close but it wasn’t, they were trying to be polite to Los Angeles.

“The spirit of Chicago is what it was all about, and the great city that we have prevailed.”

“Cleary we have a unique city with great visionaries who over a century ago decided that the lakefront should remain clear and have parks for the people,” Ryan said. “That’s unlike just about anywhere in the world and particularly good in planning for Olympic events.

“We can take advantage of our beautiful lakefront, our parks and our neighborhoods,” he said. “What’s unique about Chicago, as you know, is that we have sport along our lakefront at Soldier Field but we also have our museum campus, our hotels right nearby, great restaurants, so we have a chance to give an integrated experience to Olympic athletes, the Olympic family and spectators.”

“Everybody’s saying ‘compact Games’ today. Nobody is saying ‘center city compact Games,” Ryan said. “Chicago will be part of the vibrancy.”

“When Mayor Daley asked me to take this job on, I said two conditions: one, I had to know that he was really committed, and he convinced me of that, and second, we must have an 80,000 seat stadium for opening and closing ceremonies and track and field.”

Ryan said he and the mayor “went out into the world a little bit” to see what others had done and were doing with Olympics in Barcelona, Athens, London and also Rio (de Janiero) to see the Pan Am Games this summer.

“Getting out there,” he said, “it was clear that we have a great opportunity to win and that, in fact, we have made our bid stronger. We have to differentiate ourselves against some great cities. And what we chose as the differentiation is that the Olympics are all about the great athletes.

“So, we’ve designed our plans so that 80 percent of the athletes will be within 15 minutes or less of their competition venues.”

Ryan also noted the legacy that would be left for future generations of Illinoisans by the Olympic Games and its venues, citing the proposed equestrian sports complex in Lake County and the Olympic Village itself, which would become permanent housing.

“The reality is that we’ll be leaving a sport legacy behind us but we’ll also be leaving programmatic links like our village, built near McCormick Place, that will open up that part of that lakefront to the south side.

Given heat, humidity and smog and other environmental conditions and concerns at the recent IAAF World Track and Field Championships in Osaka, Japan, and similar predictions for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Ryan said a Chicago Games would be environmentally friendly.

“We also want this to be the most green Olympics, with trees and flowers and a clean environment,” Ryan said. “So we’re going to have a strong emphasis on clean water and clean air and try to differentiate ourselves with the quality of the water and air.”

Ryan said winning the Games for Chicago would not be easy, and praised the other cities with which Chicago would be competing. He said cities should be considered on their merits and nothing else, like political considerations.

“Politics should never trump the Olympics, it should never take precedence over the Olympics,” he said, citing “the huge mistakes” of the boycotts of the Moscow Games in 1980 by the U.S. and much of the West and of the 1984 Los Angeles Games by the then-Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies.

Chicago 2016 President Patrick G. Ryan (center) is greeted by Chicago Southland CVB President/CEO Jim Garrett and Executive Vice President Sally Schlesinger prior to his speech outlining the Olympic bid process at the recent annual meeting of the CSCVB.