"Still Chicago's to Lose"

The Olympics are coming:

• A week after the International Olympic Committee's Evaluation Commission ended their trips round the four cities bidding to win the right to host the 2016 Olympic Games the perception is still that Chicago will have to trip over their laces if they are not to win it.

  A source close to the IOC told AFP that "it is Chicago's to lose" after Morocco's 1984 Olympic 400 metres hurdles champion Nawal El Moutawakel and her fellow IOC Evaluation Commission members had left the last of the four cities Madrid.

  As is the case with previous visits to other bidding cities for other games, the end of visit press conferences were a series of polite and bland statements expressing their impressions of the candidates - their report will be delivered a month before the vote is taken in Copenhagen on October 2.

  However, the source said that whilst useful and a way for the candidates to meet and greet IOC members - the only time they can host IOC members in their respective cities since the fallout from the Salt Lake City scandal which resulted in several members being expelled for selling their votes - it was clear Chicago was still the frontrunner.

At this point, we imagine it'd take a Daley indictment to derail the train.