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Detroit and the Olympics
Detroit has tried to host the Olympic Games more than any other American city. Nine times, to be exact. The city came closest in 1968. Papers at the Bentley show how Detroit went for the gold—but came up short.
By Heather L. Dichter
CAN YOU IMAGINE AN OLYMPIC GAMES IN DETROIT? The Motor City angled for every Summer Olympic Games beginning in 1939 through 1972. Detroit rarely garnered many votes from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), but the best chance the city had was for the 1968 Olympics.
The people behind Detroit’s bid included prominent Detroiters as well as representatives from Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Detroit Edison, Parke Davis, and the city’s largest bank, Detroit Bank & Trust, known today as Comerica. The city also had the support of Michigan Governor George Romney and Douglas F. Roby, a former U-M football and baseball player, who graduated in 1923.
Roby became a prominent American sports leader involved in the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), United States Olympic Committee (USOC), and the Pan American Games. He was also an IOC member from 1952 through 1985. Both Roby and Romney donated their papers to the Bentley Historical Library, and their collections show the political challenges confronting Detroit during this time, including Cold War politics and an infrastructure on the decline.
In the early 1960s, the period of distrust and enmity between the United States and the Soviet Union—and its allies—known as the Cold War, was still in full effect. The erection of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 hardened the West’s position against East Germany. NATO tightened travel restrictions on East German citizens and on their national sports teams.
However, East Germany was not barred from the Olympics because they competed on a combined German Olympic team with West German athletes. This meant that the IOC would be inclined to pick a country to which the East Germans could travel to compete—potentially ruling out Detroit as a host city.
Roby jumped in to liaise between the Detroit bid committee and the U.S. State Department to prevent travel restrictions from hurting Detroit’s chances to win the Olympic Games. Roby was in frequent contact with the State Department about this matter, trying to make sure that a letter guaranteeing free travel, which Detroit provided, was accepted by the IOC.
Meanwhile, the USOC selected Detroit as the America’s candidate city in October 1962, meaning the first hurdle was cleared. Now, Detroit could move on to the next round of selection against other candidate cities across the world. However, Los Angeles officials weren’t inclined to let Detroit through; they fought the USOC’s decision for the next five months.
Romney and Detroit mayor Jerome P. Cavanagh attended the special USOC meeting in New York City in March 1963 that officially ended Los Angeles’s hopes and reaffirmed Detroit as the American candidate city for the 1968 Summer Olympics. “This was the greatest vote of confidence ever placed in Detroit and Michigan,” Governor Romney said of the victory.
But the battle for the Olympics was far from over.
INFRASTRUCTURE CHALLENGES
Between 1947 and 1963, Detroit lost 134,000 manufacturing jobs. While deindustrialization and racism intensified poverty for Detroit’s African American residents, it also shifted jobs and wealth to the suburbs—away from the city. As a result, Detroit’s tax base shrank, and the city lost money year after year.
Into this stepped Roby, determined to use the Olympics as an opportunity to build and invest in the city. “Facilities like Cobo Hall, Olympia, the University of Detroit Memorial Building, and Titan Stadium will be usable,” he told the Detroit News in November 1962. But other facilities would have to be enlarged or built from scratch, he said, including a 110,000-seat stadium on the Michigan State Fairgrounds.
Chicago businessman Avery Brundage, the president of the IOC, visited Detroit to tour the city’s facilities in September 1963, a month before the IOC voted. Roby, Romney, and Cavanagh were part of the group that showed Brundage the venues that they all hoped would host Olympic events. On the tour were Cobo Hall and the Civic Center, followed by a lunch at the Detroit Athletic Club.
ONWARD TO GERMANY
In October 1963, the International Olympic Committee met in Baden-Baden, West Germany, to select the city for the 1968 Summer Olympics. The cities competing against Detroit were Lyon, France; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Mexico City, Mexico.
Each city made a formal presentation to the IOC and also organized an elaborate reception. To make its case, Detroit shipped 3.5 tons of materials across the Atlantic Ocean and a 60-person delegation to build a reception exhibit, which included panoramic images of the city sliding across two large screens. The center of the exhibit was a 12-foot model of the Michigan State Fairgrounds, including the proposed 110,000-seat stadium. The Detroit News noted that “auto and advertising company heads, a real estate tycoons, utility, public relations and film company executives” assembled the exhibit in what the paper called “the highest-paid construction crew in building trades history.” Romney even traveled to West Germany for the city’s final 45-minute presentation to the IOC. Detroit included a slick 31 minutes of color video footage featuring a filmed speech by President John F. Kennedy.
ALWAYS A BRIDESMAID
When the IOC voted, Mexico City overwhelmingly won with 30 of the 58 votes. Detroit received 14 votes; Lyon received 12; and Buenos Aires had only two.
After losing to Mexico City, Detroit tried one more time to host the Olympic Games, failing to achieve its goal once again with its bid for the 1972 Summer Olympics.
Nearly 50 years later, when the USOC was seeking an American candidate city to bid for the 2024 Olympics, they sent a letter to 35 of the largest U.S. cities—including Detroit. Boston originally received the nod before bowing out, and Los Angeles stepped in as the U.S. candidate city. The IOC ultimately decided to award the 2024 Olympics to Paris and the 2028 Games to Los Angeles.
Perhaps someday again Detroit will be the United States’ candidate for the Olympic Games. Dr. Heather L. Dichter is an Associate Professor of Sport History and Sport Management at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University in Leicester, U.K. She has edited two books on sport and diplomacy and her most recent book, Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games: International Sport’s Cold War Battle with NATO (Massachusetts, 2021), used the Romney and Roby collections held at the Bentley.
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Michigan Governor George Romney (far right) celebrates Detroit’s success as the U.S. candidate city for the 1968 Olympics.
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