L.A. a player in expected U.S. Olympic bid

The U.S. Olympic Committee is expected to announce today it will submit a bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The candidates are Chicago and Los Angeles.

After an evaluation process that lasted more than six months, the USOC was to announce today whether it would enter a candidate in a field likely to include Tokyo, Rome, Rio de Janeiro and Doha, Qatar.

While a decision to proceed long has been considered inevitable, USOC officials will not have made it lightly. They wanted to make sure any U.S. city had a chance to win in 2016 and that the cities involved could present strong candidatures.

The USOC sent out an advisory late Monday about a forthcoming announcement and would not comment further.

The USOC would makes its choice at an April board meeting. The exact nature of the final selection process has yet to be determined.

Cities must submit their candidature to the International Olympic Committee by Sept. 15. The IOC members will vote for the 2016 host city in October 2009.

The next stage of the domestic bid process ends Jan. 22, the deadline for Chicago and Los Angeles to submit a candidature file with extensive documentation. For Chicago, that means providing details on its funding for about $800 million in Olympic sports venues and a $1-billion Olympic Village.

A USOC evaluation team would visit Chicago and Los Angeles for about three days each within the next two months. The USOC board will hear the evaluation commission’s report just before picking the U.S. candidate.

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Philip Hersh covers the Olympics for The Times and the Chicago Tribune.