Rio 2016
Rio de Janeiro’s bidding process began on July 28, 2006, when the Executive Council of the Brazilian Olympic Committee (BOC) met to consider the possibility of nominating a Brazilian city to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2016. This meeting was prompted by the fact that several cities in the world demonstrated interest around the election, some having already announced their bidding intention. The BOC then commissioned a technical analysis to evaluate the conditions of the city, unveiled on August 25, 2006. On September 1, 2006, the BOC’s Annual Assembly decided by acclamation that Rio de Janeiro would be the Brazilian representative seeking to host the 2016 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. The Assembly felt it was the only city in Brazil and South America which would possess Olympic-level facilities ready for an Olympic bid, a legacy of its upcoming hosting of the XV Pan American Games in 2007, considered to be the best in history. Another positive aspect was that Rio de Janeiro could host all the Olympic sports, excepting football (soccer), within the city limits. The Brazilian government immediately expressed its full support to the bid. Carlos Arthur Nuzman, the BOC President, and César Maia, then Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, approved the decision, thus making the city the official Brazilian candidate.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) launched the bidding process for the 2016 Summer Olympics and Paralympics on May 16, 2007. All then 203 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) were invited to submit the name of a city within their jurisdiction until September 13, 2007. On September 14, 2007, the IOC recognized seven cities—Baku, Chicago, Doha, Madrid, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo—which had been put forward by their respective NOCs to bid. On October 1, 2007, the Rio de Janeiro bid committee paid a fee of US$150,000 to the IOC and signed the Candidature Acceptance Procedure. Soon after, from October 15 to 19, 2007, Rio officials attended the 2016 Applicant cities’ Seminar at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, where they learnt more about the bidding process. On January 14, 2008, the seven Applicant cities returned their Application Files, containing the answers and guarantees requested by the 2016 Candidature Acceptance Procedure, which provided to the IOC an overview of each city’s project. The responses were studied by the IOC Working Group for months, culminating with the announcement of Chicago, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and Madrid as Candidate cities on June 4, 2008, during a meeting of the IOC Executive Board at the 2008 SportAccord convention in Athens, Greece.
Rio de Janeiro bid for the 1936, 2004 and the 2012 Summer Olympics, but failed on every occasion, missing the shortlist in the two latest attempts. For the first time in the Candidature phase, the Rio de Janeiro bid committee participated in the Olympic Games Observers Program between August 8 and August 24, 2008, during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. On February 11, 2009, Rio officials delivered its Candidature File to the IOC, containing the responses to the 2016 Candidature Procedure and Questionnaire. Eight days later, on February 19, 2009, the Candidature File was also delivered to the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) in Bonn, Germany. The Rio de Janeiro 2016 Candidature File had three volumes containing 568 pages of detailed answers to 300 technical questions, divided into 17 themes. On March 26, 2009, the Rio de Janeiro bid committee made a praised presentation during the 2009 SportAccord conference in Denver, United States. It was the first time that the world map with the Olympic host cities and a blank in South America was displayed, subsequently becoming an icon of Rio’s campaign. On June 17, 2009, the IOC organized the 2016 Candidate Cities Briefing to its members at the Olympic Museum, where the Rio de Janeiro bid committee made the most important presentation before the election.