Seven cities bid for 2016 Olympics

Seven cities are to bid for the 2016 Olympics with Chicago the early favourites to follow London as the Games' hosts.

The International Olympic Committee announced on Friday that Baku (Azerbaijan), Chicago (USA), Doha (Qatar), Madrid (Spain), Prague (Czech Republic), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Tokyo (Japan) are all bidding.

Chicago are deemed front-runners at the moment because with the 2012 Games in Europe, the IOC are unlikely to return to the continent for the following summer Games, which puts an obstacle in the way of Madrid and Prague.

Similarly, with Beijing hosting the Games next year IOC members may feel less urgency to give the 2016 event to another Asian city such as Tokyo and Baku, while there are question marks over whether Doha in Qatar is big enough to host the Games.

That leaves Chicago and Rio as the main candidates but the American city has a number of advantages: mainly that it would be 20 years since the summer Games was last in north America.

Furthermore, Brazil are hosting the football World Cup in 2014 and many IOC members would shy away from awarding the Olympics just two years' later.

Chicago have also benefited from coming through an intense competition within the USA to secure the US Olympic Committee's nomination and initially at least appear to have avoided the problems that dogged New York's bid for 2012, specifically in terms of the site of the planned Olympic Stadium.

The seven applicant cities will now proceed to phase one of the IOC's two-step procedure, which will lead to the election of the host city in Copenhagen on October 2, 2009.

The first phase involves a review by the IOC of each city's potential to organise a successful Games with applicants required to answer a detailed questionnaire.

Following this, the IOC executive board will exclude any city who are not deemed to be ready and those remaining will enter the final bidding process as candidate cities.