Going for gold: Detroit’s nine attempts to get Olympics came up empty

As Rio prepares to host an Olympic Games, many are wondering whether the time and expense are worth all the effort. For many years now the Olympic movement has been beset by scandals: doping, bribery and most of all the sense that the host city gets little from the Games other than a financial headache.

Today we see more and more cities passing on the opportunity to host the Olympics. Boston withdrew its bid for the 2024 Summer Games, and the German city of Hamburg voted against it. Oslo and Munich both decided that the 2022 Winter Games were not worth it.

But in less cynical times, cities were more confident of the benefits, none more so than Detroit, which bid for every Summer Games from 1940 to 1972. Back then hosting the Olympics was a more manageable proposition, and putting together a bid was not the opera it has since become.

Television, and the money associated with it, has more than anything turned the Olympics from an amateur athletic festival into a professional business. The sad story of the Motor City’s failure, which is painstakingly documented in 30 boxes of materials available in the Detroit Public Library, also is the story of the corruption of the Olympic ideal, right up to the point where it got out of hand.

Bid 1: 1940 Games

By the 1930s, Detroit had established itself as a sports city with successful professional baseball, hockey and football teams, a reputation for producing boxers as well as top athletes in many other sports. The city had a wealth of modern sports facilities, including the Olympia Arena (16,000 capacity) and Tiger Stadium/Briggs Stadium (52,000), as well as ideal locations for rowing (Detroit River) and sailing (Lake St. Clair), and any number of smaller facilities.

Detroit also played an honorable role in the development of the U.S. Olympic movement. The idea to host the Games was due to George Graves, treasurer of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), who assembled a committee of interested Detroiters in 1936. But the man who took the idea on and ran with it for over three decades was Fred Matthaei, a self-made businessmen who devoted a large part of his life to amateur sport.

The 1940 Games were originally awarded to Tokyo, but Japan withdrew in 1939 because the country was already at war with China. War in Europe had not started, and there was a global scramble to step into Tokyo’s shoes. Matthaei persuaded the City of Detroit to guarantee $3 million to build an Olympic stadium and swimming facility, equivalent to about $50 million in today’s money. This compares favorably to the $5 billion allegedly spent on Rio 2016, $15 billion by London in 2012 and who knows how much by Beijing in 2008.

To help him promote the bid, he called on another native Detroiter and self-made businessman, Avery Brundage, then president of the USOC and soon to become president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Brundage encouraged Matthaei, arguing that although 1940 would probably be awarded to Helsinki, the IOC was an honorable organization and would always repay those cities that showed a commitment to the Games while respecting the priority of others. The Games were duly awarded to Helsinki.

Bid 2: 1944 Games

Matthaei immediately indicated that Detroit would bid for the 1944 Games, a decision that was to be taken into consideration at a meeting of the IOC in London in the summer of 1939. This time Brundage told him that London had the nod but to keep trying as the Games after that would surely go to Detroit. Though London was selected, war in Europe broke out in September 1939, causing the cancellation of the 1940 Games and, in due course, the 1944 Games. But by 1944 it was clear that the war would end, and thoughts turned to 1948.

Bid 3: 1948 Games

More a phantom bid than an actual bid, Matthaei’s Detroit Olympic Committee (DOC) had already drawn up architects’ plans for a 100,000-seat covered stadium but was persuaded by Brundage not to interfere with London’s bid, given its established priority. Not that this stopped Baltimore, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Minneapolis from submitting bids, but after its long wartime resistance London won the bidding easily.

Bid 4: 1952 Games

The decision on the London Games had been made in September 1946, the decision on 1952 was to be taken soon after in the summer of 1947. Given the number of American cities now interested in becoming hosts, the DOC (Matthaei) lobbied the USOC (Brundage) to pick a single city to represent it, a decision that was agreed at a meeting in New York in the fall of 1946. Brundage warned Matthaei that Helsinki would have priority, given the award for 1940, but until early 1947 it looked as if Finland would fall under Soviet control and not be capable of hosting the Games.

Detroit’s bid came with the endorsement of the city, the governor and the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as a host of worthy businessmen from the auto industry, not to mention the halo acquired as the Arsenal of Democracy. The son of IOC president Sigfrid Edstom even begged Matthaei to arrange a business deal at the IOC meeting in Stockholm. However, by the spring of 1947 it became clear that Finland would retain its independence and Helsinki would assert its moral right. Impoverished Europeans even doubted they could afford to send teams to participate in an American-hosted Games. Helsinki duly won.

Bid 5: 1956 Games

Not that Matthaei was entirely despondent. In the event the moral path had been followed and now surely with pre-war promises all settled, Detroit must be next in line.

Thus Detroit eagerly pushed for the 1956 Games. Matthaei had by now assembled the backing of almost all of the city’s power brokers, including the city government and the auto companies that instructed their overseas representatives to lobby for the Games. With the decision to be taken in Rome in the spring of 1949, the city’s reputation was at its zenith, both as the center of the auto world and as the Arsenal of Democracy.

Detailed plans showed that almost all events could be accommodated in existing facilities, with only an Olympic stadium lacking. New plans were drawn up to build a covered stadium on the Wayne State campus, at a projected cost of $15 million ($150 million in today’s money). Following the analysis of an evaluation commission considering the merits of competing bids from Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and San Francisco, the USOC decided to officially back Detroit.

With the official endorsement of the city government, the state of Michigan, a resolution of the U.S. Senate alongside the USOC endorsement, Matthaei traveled to Rome confident of success. It was Detroit’s turn, and Detroit was ready — what could go wrong?

If you want a villain, one candidate would be Jack Garland, a newly minted member of the IOC who had inherited his seat from his father, the recently deceased William May Garland, a longtime friend of Brundage and organizer of the 1932 Games in Los Angeles. Jack Garland seemed to take the view that L.A. was the only city capable of hosting the Games in the U.S., and so, ignoring the decision of the USOC, traveled to Rome to argue his city’s case. Minneapolis also turned up at the meetings to press its claims.

After intense discussions among the U.S. contingent, Minneapolis agreed to withdraw its bid if L.A. would, but L.A. refused. Then bizarrely Brundage insisted that if those two bid he also would have to present the cases for Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco, even though they were not present, claiming he was honor-bound to do so. Chaos ensued and Melbourne was selected. Perhaps loyalty to his late friend induced Brundage to deflect criticism from Garland and L.A. But there can be little doubt that Detroit would have won had the U.S. delegation presented a unified front. Following this debacle, an angry correspondence ensued between Matthaei and Brundage, which would play a role in future bids as the latter became IOC president in 1952.

Bid 6: 1960 Games

For the first time, the IOC issued written directions to potential host cities indicating what was expected of a host and questionnaire consisting of 13 questions, the whole thing fitting onto four pages (today the documentation for any one bid runs to thousands of pages). It also required that each national Olympic Committee submit only one bid.

Once again Matthaei assembled an impressive organization to manage a bid, won USOC approval, the endorsement of city, state, U.S. Congress and President Eisenhower, only to be told by Brundage that a straw poll of International Federation chiefs showed that 16 out of 17 wanted a Games in Europe. It was even argued that the eventual winner, Rome, had a moral right since the Eternal City had never yet staged the Games. As if to rub the city’s nose in it, Squaw Valley in California, promoted by Garland, was awarded the Winter Games despite possessing virtually no facilities necessary to host.

Bid 7: 1964 Games

Matthaei and the DOC clung to the view that persistence and commitment would one day be rewarded. The 1964 bid document resembled the 1960 edition in many ways, but by then the new civic center (eventually to become the Cobo Center) was under construction, lending yet further the city’s impressive array of facilities. By this time, Detroit also had a world-class swimming venue in Rouge Park, leaving only the perennial problem of the Olympic stadium.

For the first time, the DOC considered engaging a PR agency but passed on the grounds that this might be a bit too ostentatious. In any case, its main rival, Tokyo, was beset by problems associated with growing congestion and corruption surrounding the 1958 Asian Games.

This, however, was to underestimate the power of the Brundage connection. Along with the Olympics, Brundage’s other longstanding passion was collecting Asian art, which aligned very nicely with the first Games to be held in Asia.

After Detroit’s presentation, Brundage said “we commend you for your persistence and hope you will come back again” without even waiting for the vote. Garland cheerily sought out the deflated Detroit bid team the next day and shared his opinion that they had brought shame on the U.S. Olympic movement.

Bid 8: 1968 Games

Not for the first time, many in Detroit counseled Matthaei to give up. But by now a new generation of civic leaders, led by Gov. George Romney and Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanagh had been bitten by the Olympic bug and pushed aggressively for another bid with an aging Matthaei organizing behind the scenes. This time the exhaustive plans focused on the redevelopment of the State Fairgrounds and once again an impressive array of backers were lined up.

The story of the 1968 bid is well told in David Maraniss’ book, “Once in a Great City.” As ever, Detroit lost less on the quality of its bid and more on the politics of the situation. With the decision being made in 1963, the planning took place against the rising tide of the civil rights movement in which the city played a major role. Several people argued that the city would do better to deal with urban deprivation and the housing crisis rather than idealistic dreams. In any event, Mexico City won.

Bid 9: 1972 Games

Detroit’s last bid reads like a footnote. By now no one really expected the city to win, and the claim to moral priority would have elicited a hollow laugh from the DOC delegation. The minutes of the 64th IOC session in Rome, where the decision was made, even misspell Matthaei’s name (Matthai) — after nine bids. To no one’s surprise the Games were lost to Munich. By an irony of history three of the enemy axis powers (Finland, Japan and Germany) had all defeated the Arsenal of Democracy since 1945.

Today it is easy to be cynical about the Games and realistic to doubt the economic benefit. Detroit always had a problem with an Olympic stadium, and there’s a good argument to say that the bids always came from the city’s white elite, and failed to address real issues such as the housing crisis that dogged the city and disproportionately affected the African American community.

Yet back in the day, the city could have afforded the Games, and with sports’ potential to cross cultural divides, could have done something to unify the city. One of the saddest monuments to Detroit’s failed bids is contained in box 25 of the Olympic Archive in Detroit Public Library. It contains hundreds of sheets, each containing dozens of signatures, as part of a petition organized by the Detroit Free Press to show the enthusiasm of the city for the 1968 bid.

If there were justice in world, the IOC would give Detroit the Games in 2028. Not in order to fleece the city by demanding impossible construction projects but to host a modest, human-sized games, using the remarkable range of facilities that Detroit already possesses, and to say, after all, that the Olympic spirit works both ways, and that a city that tried so hard and was unfairly spurned when times were good, deserves credit and support in more difficult times. Who knows, it might even give the IOC some credibility.

Stefan Szymanski is the Stephen J. Galetti Professor of Sport Management at the University of Michigan. His next book will be about Detroit and the Olympics.