Relationships key to getting Games: Rudge

The chief executive officer of the Canadian Olympic Committee has issued a challenge to people in Toronto, within the sport community in Canada and civic community in Toronto, to get engaged in international business.

In turn, having them increase their personal profile and develop important relationships could help the city in a future Olympic bid.

That's the view of Chris Rudge, who spoke to CBCSports.ca by phone Friday from Copenhagen, where the International Olympic Committee, awarded the 2016 Summer Games to Rio de Janeiro.

Madrid was the other finalist and lost by a 66-32 count to Rio on the third and final ballot, according to GamesBids.com.

Tokyo, host of the Games in 1964, was eliminated in Round 2 on Friday after collecting just 20 of 97 eligible votes while the United States was ousted in the first round, garnering just 18 votes.

Also in Denmark for Friday's announcement was Bob Richardson, an adviser to Toronto's bid for the 2015 Pan American Games.

"I think the first thing that we've got to do is make sure we win this Pan American Games bid," Rudge said when asked what Friday's Olympic announcement means for Toronto.

"Toronto has to demonstrate that it can host an event of this [Olympic] magnitude and, although it's not an Olympics, the Pan Am Games are huge. There are more athletes than there will be in Vancouver [for the 2010 Winter Olympics]. There are more venues."

Rudge also noted a Pan Am Games in Toronto would develop, within the community of southern Ontario and Toronto per se, a legacy of volunteerism that probably doesn't exist there the way it does in any other cities right now, so I think that bodes well for Toronto.

He said it also shows if Toronto is going to win [an Olympic bid] in the future, it will be based upon building the types of relationships that will inspire people to support the city and vote for it.

"These [Olympic] bids, the way the IOC structures them right now, are not won on the technical merits of the bid," said Rudge. "If that were the case, Chicago was probably head-and-shoulders above everybody [with its 2016 proposal]."

Besides attending the upcoming IOC Congress, Rudge intends to use his relationships with those in the Pan American community to help sell Toronto to the voters of the event, namely the national Olympic committee presidents.

Richardson, too, is trying to cultivate relationships with Pan-Am voters in Copenhagen as part of a contingent that includes Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and Federal Sports Minister Gary Lunn.

"We've got a ton of work to do because our vote is four weeks away in Guadalajara, Mexico, and we're here to study the presentation," Richardson, who was part of Toronto's Olympic bid in 2008, told CBCSports.ca.

"We're obviously meeting [voters], telling them about our plans and getting feedback. Our job is to put Toronto's best foot forward here."