COPENHAGEN - The crowds could not wait to see the President and First Lady of the United States and the first lady of television.

But despite nearly a week of red-carpet glitz starring Oprah Winfrey, some old-fashioned politicking by Michelle Obama and an 11th-hour cameo from President Obama, Chicago was a first-round knockout victim in the International Olympic Committee's vote to determine the host of the 2016 Olympics.

Even the final awarding of the Games of the XXXI Olympiad to Rio de Janeiro seemed anticlimactic in the wake of America's colossal failure.

Chicago polled only 18 of the 94 votes cast in round one. Most of those shifted to Rio, which came within two votes in the second round of getting the necessary 50-percent majority. With Tokyo then eliminated, Rio easily defeated Madrid 66-32 in the decisive third round.

"Some days you win; some days you don't," said Pat Ryan, the chief of the Chicago 2016 bid. "To use a sports metaphor, I think we had a great team. We had a great plan. But it wasn't our day to win today."

The tide was turning against Chicago even before Air Force One touched down at Copenhagen Airport. President Obama's anticipated presence alone made for front-page headlines in Danish newspapers early in the week and provided the drumbeat leading up to the vote.

But by rolling out America's big stars, some IOC members wondered aloud if Chicago was not turning their vote into a referendum on the importance of style over substance.

"I think frankly that's starting to get out of hand," said Dick Pound, the anti-doping pioneer who remains one of the IOC's most influential members. "I'm not sure that with all the things on the plate of a head of state of a serious country - let alone the leader of the free world - should have to come to the IOC to say in person that his country is serious about the Games. I think we ought to look at that in the future."

It was not as if political power did not have its place in this campaign. Where Obama was matter of fact and filled with gravitas during his touch-and-go mission to Denmark, Brazilian president Lula da Silva was the laughing, crying, ebullient hip-shooter who tirelessly campaigned for Rio all week.

"Some fellows here saw Air Force One arriving in Copenhagen," Lula told a news conference tonight. "My friends said, ‘Obama has arrived, and we're going to lose.' I was at the G-20 meeting with Obama, and I invited Obama to come to Copenhagen today. (I told him) if you don't go I'm going to win, because I'm going. And then he came.

"But God wished that we would win, even if he did come here."

IOC president Jacques Rogge had a simpler explanation for Rio's victory than divine intervention or political backlash.

"The message is clear," he said. "There was absolutely no flaw in the bid. The members I believe choose also for the extra, added value of going for the first time to a sub-continent that never had the Games."