Specifically, what exactly was meant by the statement that the USOC had “agreed to the principle of participation in the Games costs at an appropriate level”?

 

It has taken a while, but after contacting a number of parties, including Gerhard Heiberg, one of the IOC men at a meeting that preceded the statement, whom I spoke to in Bordeaux, I am a little clearer.

 

What we are talking about is not the cost of building the Olympic stadium and such like, as you might have understood, but a series of centralised, Games-related costs borne by the Olympic Movement.

 

Examples of this type of expenditure are anti-doping operations, the provision of judges and umpires and costs run up by the IOC’s Evaluation and Co-ordination Commissions.

 

For the 20th Winter Games in Turin three years ago, this sort of Olympic Games-related expenditure reached $34.6 million (£23.7 million).

 

While it is suffering along with other national Olympic committees in the global recession, based on what it receives from the Movement, it is hard not to conclude that the USOC can afford to chip in to help foot this bill.

 

When I looked into this last year, I found that the USOC gets 12.75 per cent of the sums paid for US broadcasting rights to each successive Olympics.

 

That should have equated to $170.7 (£117.2 million) in 2001-04 and $192 million (£132 million) in 2005-08.

 

It also has a contractual agreement with the IOC pertaining to the TOP worldwide sponsorship programme.

 

In the USOC’s own words, this “stipulates what typically is a 20 per cent share to the USOC.

 

“However, the IOC deducts from that share a management fee (which is significant in terms of the overall percentage) and other expenses – all of which means the actual percentage the USOC receives is much less than 20 per cent.”

 

When I scrutinised IOC financial statements covering the four years from 2003-2006, they appeared to me to indicate that more than $103.6 million (£71.1 million) of TOP money (12.4 percent of the total) was distributed to the USOC during this period, compared with $135.4 million (£93 million) (16.25 percent) for other NOCs.

 

The likely size of any new US contribution will not become clear at least until another meeting to be held before the end of the year – but not, I am told, before IOC members vote in October on the host city for the 2016 Summer Games.

 

Meanwhile, it looks like no significant change in the overall revenue-sharing formulae will be negotiated before 2013 or will take effect before 2020.

 

“I think the entire Movement needs more clarity on the revenue picture once the global economy settles down,” Bob Ctvrtlik, first vice president of the USOC and another participant at last month’s meeting, told me.

 

“It’s in everyone’s interest to work together to increase the revenues and finances for the entire Olympic Movement.”

 

Given that nothing, for the moment, actually changes, will the joint statement be enough to prevent the issue from impacting negatively on Chicago’s efforts to win the right to stage the 2016 Games, in a race also including Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo?

 

I must say I was a little surprised, but the soundings I have taken so far suggest that it will.

 

The issue that looks at this stage – with the IOC’s Evaluation Commission having completed its visits to the US and Japanese candidates – as though it has more potential to damage the Windy City’s prospects is the matter of financial guarantees.

 

In essence, while the national Governments of the other three candidates appear prepared to help cover any unexpected deficit incurred in organising the Games, the US, so far as I can make out, does not.

 

Chicago’s bid book talks of “more than $450 million (£309 million) of financial contingencies” in the Games budget against cost increases or revenue shortfalls.

 

It says that the City of Chicago has agreed to a $500 million (£343 million) guarantee and indemnity and that “a private insurer” has indicated its interest in providing coverage against a potential financial shortfall or risks not covered in Games cancellation policies.

 

Chicago 2016 confirmed to me that an additional $250 million (£171 million) state guarantee had now been received, but indicated that there was nothing similar from the Federal Government.

 

A recent piece by Alan Abrahamson, one of the most respected Olympic commentators, quoted Chicago mayor Richard Daley as saying: “The IOC is well aware of the fact that our Federal Government does not underwrite the cost of the Olympic Games – it’s as simple as that.

 

“They do, however, provide funding for some of the most costly line items such as security.”

 

According to the bid book, the Federal Government, indeed, will “appropriate funds and dedicate the personnel, equipment and resources necessary to ensure the security of a Chicago Olympic Games”.

 

The Olympic Charter does not actually require that financial guarantees be received from national Governments.

 

It says that candidate cities “shall provide financial guarantees as required by the IOC Executive Board, which will determine whether such guarantees shall be issued by the city itself, or by any other competent local, regional or national public authorities, or by any third parties”.

 

The national Government must “submit to the IOC a legally binding instrument by which the said Government undertakes and guarantees that the country and its public authorities will comply with and respect the Olympic Charter”.

 

But if Chicago’s three rivals all have national Government financial guarantees, is there not a risk that the US city would be handicapped if it went into the October vote without one?

 

Particularly in the present economic climate.

 

Personally, I would have thought the nature of the guarantee and creditworthiness of the parties involved were more important than the level of government giving the undertaking.

 

However, last June’s IOC working group report noted that the wording of the Chicago bid’s Government guarantee “does not fully conform to the IOC required text”.

 

I was also struck by how forcefully one source, whose opinions on Olympic matters I have come to respect, asserted that the present US position was a “grave misjudgement” and that without something akin to an Olympic law giving an unconditional shortfall guarantee, Chicago’s bid faced a major obstacle.

 

In other respects, in this source’s view, Chicago now has everything going for them.

 

If he is right though, President Barack Obama, the bid’s Number One supporter, might need to do more than simply show up in Copenhagen for the city’s dream to be realised.

 

Ï Still with Chicago, I have recently been reading about the life of Henry Binga Dismond.

 

In his book, The Revolt of the Black Athlete, Harry Edwards describes him as “the original Negro track sensation in America – a meteor who flared in Chicago in 1916-17”.

 

“He’s forgotten now,” Edwards writes.

 

However, he cites Charley Paddock, “the Caucasian sprint champion of that time”, as saying that “Binga could beat any man alive at 440 yards.

 

“But he was required to run on the outside of the pack, all the way around, so as to avoid physical contact with any white.

 

“Eventually, discouraged, he disappeared.”

 

This would already make Dismond a pretty remarkable man.

 

But, as I discovered, he did not disappear so much as head to France with the 370th Infantry Division, serving on active duty for 18 months before returning to the US aboard La France.

 

He then attended medical school, obtaining his MD in 1921 and eventually settled in Harlem.

 

For this and other information, I am indebted to an article by Alan E. Oestreich MD published some years ago in the Journal of the National Medical Association.

 

As Oestreich outlines, Dismond’s practice specialised in X-rays and physical therapy, while he also found time to have a book of poetry published and be decorated with the Haitian National Order of

Honour and Merit.

 

Oestreich also includes more detail about Dismond’s running, saying that on June 3, 1916 in Evanston, a Chicago suburb, he tied the world record for the 440-yard dash, with a time of 47.7secs.

 

It is possible that Chicago already has its fair share of Henry Binga Dismond memorials.

 

If it does not, might I respectfully suggest that the city’s 2016 Olympic project affords a magnificent opportunity to pay tribute to an extraordinary, ground-breaking athlete and, it seems, human being.

 

The Obamas, I feel sure, would heartily approve.