I think it is awesome that a Latin American country won the bid this time around and Rio de Janeiro definitely deserves to be chosen as the 2016 host. It is exciting

Congrats to all residents/citizens of Rio and Latin America

Congratulations to Rio! It was about time South America hosts Olympic Games. I'm sure Rio and Brazil will do a great job as a host. Rio is Cidade Maravilhosa after all

Not a fan of the Olympics at all in terms of hosting it.  The games themselves are fantastic.

I am happy to see a South American country get it, it will create such great aura in the city and pride for the country.  The problem lies in spending all this money that will never return much more than a lot of infrastructure and no real economic benefit.  I hope that Rio can pull off what no other city has except LA and make it a profitable games for themselves without landing themselves into too much debt like Sochi (costs have tripled to $33 billion US from just under $12 billion)

I am kind of divided by the result.  One part of me is happy because it's a great opportunity to bring investments to the city, especially in public transportation, and an amazing showcase for tourism.  On the other hand, we have a history of poor management of public constructions, not because of lack of technical capacity, but for intentional misuse of public money.

When we had constructions for the 2007 Panamerican Games, there were a lot of problems and delays, and in the end the construction companies had to finish everything in a hurry, working in long shifts with extra costs to have everything ready on time.  The venues were finished in time and, as far as I know, complete, but at a cost 2-3x the original plan - whose costs were probably underestimated from the start, in my opinion.  And nothing was improved in public transportation, which was one of the most expected results for the city.  Now the new swimming complex is abandoned (competitions are being held in the old one), a multi-purpose arena with high-tech flooring was rented to run as a concert hall and the apartment buildings used as accomodation were not release to their buyers because of some bureaucratic problem.

I hope we learnt from this experience, but the heads of our Olympic Committee are the same, what makes me a bit unease. We have the human material to make it an awesome event, and I hope the greed of some won't destroy that amazing possibility that hosting the games can mean for my beloved city.

  I'm  not  a  olympic  fan  but  congadulations  to  the  city.  Hope  they  make  it  memorial

Think of it this way: if you had never been no any of those 4 cities (Chicago, Madrid, Rio and Tokyo) and you had no personal reason to go to any of those (like a relative or an old friend living there), in which of them would you like to spend 2 weeks?   

Mind you, if the cities were Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo and S�o Paulo (instead of Rio), maybe the result would be different.  The natural beauty of Rio certainly did play a role in the decision.

I wonder if all that last minute campaign really changes anything.  I mean, does one of the voters change his opinion (which should be technically based to begin with) just because Obama or Lula or the King of Spain are there, or because of a touching video showing the people's commitment with hosting the games?

Interesting point, I agree that the last minute things shouldn't really make a difference - but in terms of which city to spent time it, having only been to 2 out of the 4 (probably Rio next month though which I'm excited about) I think they're all pretty attractive destinations that have a lot going from them. Tokyo and Chicago are 2 of my favourite cities and Rio is one of the cities I've been looking forward to seeing most, and Madrid is also pretty high up on the list of places that I want to o but haven't been to yet... tough choice really!

http://ayrton.com/360/fs/rio2016_votacao.html

Is this type of image taken in just one shot?  I can't see any flaws we would expect when stitching images from several sequential shots.

Very cool... I think its probably done with a few images from an ultra-wide angle lens... but I don't know for sure - also curious!