Rio de Janeiro was selected to the 2016 Olympic bid shortlist while scoring lower than the bid from Doha - a city eliminated from the field.
Typically, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) selects the top scoring bids based on questionnaire responses and IOC investigations. They choose bids that are over a determined "benchmark". However, this time the IOC changed the rules and eliminated Doha, a city that was almost tied for third and ahead of another accepted bid.
Doha's weaknesses were a small population, lack of facilities and planned Games dates outside of the IOC's desired window. The IOC may have considered one of these obstacles to be too large to accept.
Tokyo had the best overall score of 8.3 followed closely by Madrid at 8.1. Chicago placed third with 7.0 Doha came in at 6.9. Rio de Janeiro scored 6.4 followed by Prague at 5.4 and Baku at 4.3.
The top five bids were over the benchmark but Doha was excluded from the short list.
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