Funny when you catch someone not telling the truth how they hem and haw and backtrack. Such was the case with my visit to the Chicago 2016 booth. I spoke with a young lady who will remain anonymous and I told her of my so-far unsatisfactory dealings with them. I said I had one simple question: why doesn't their head of PR (in fact anyone at their organisation) ever return emails?
After a few shifts of the feet, she said that there "had to have been some kind of mistake" and I stopped her right there-there had been no mistake, "especially after I sent you people six or seven emails with no response." I also proceeded to tell her of the story of a friend of mine who didn't start to get his emails returned until a friend of his joined the bid.
She stammered that you didn't have to have a friend on the bid committee to get a response and my parting comments were that I "thought it was extremely rude and that (I) was not impressed."
Left in the dust: one 2016 rep wondering what had hit her.
In all my years on the Olympic scene, I have never even run into such a disorganised, rude, thoughtless group of people as Chicago 2016. May their bid sink without a trace in October-which is exactly what they deserve.
Because you can't treat the written press like dirt-and not expect to suffer the consequences of your actions.
In this case, defeat in Copenhagen come October.
