Tokyo, Chicago, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro have been chosen final candidates for the 2016 Olympic Games. Japan's capital city has received the top rating in the International Olympic Committee's preliminary selection round, but this only marks the start of a long race. The climax comes Oct. 2, 2009, when the winner will be chosen in Copenhagen. If Tokyo wants to host the 2016 Olympics, it will need to equip itself with ingenuity and a well-worked strategy.
Tokyo ranked first, ahead of Madrid, in an IOC evaluation of the overall technical merits of candidate cities. Factors such as infrastructure, sports venues, safety and security, environmental conditions were assessed. Chicago and Doha came in third and fourth. Rio de Janeiro, Prague and Baku were fifth, sixth and seventh. Tokyo proposed to host "the world's most compact Olympics" with most sports sites concentrated within an 8-km radius and 75,000 hotel rooms within a 10-km radius.
The IOC made a hard decision not to put Doha on the short list. Doha was eager to host the first Olympics in the Middle East. Although it hosted the 2006 Asian Games, there was a fear within the IOC that it would be difficult for the Qatar city to host summer Olympic Games. The IOC eventually left Doha out on the grounds that its proposal to hold the Games in October, rather than in July or August, was unacceptable.