As you've surely heard by now, Rio de Janeiro was named the host city of the 2016 Olympics. To cap our week-long coverage of the bids, Fourth-Place Medal looks at 10 things we learned from today's vote in Copenhagen. For an in-depth look at some of the possible reasons Rio beat out Chicago for the Games, read our post from earlier this morning.

1) Rio de Janeiro's win was as decisive as Olympics votes can get. The Brazilian city earned 66 votes in the final round compared to just 32 for runner-up Madrid. That 67.3 percent total is the highest percentage for an elected winner since 1936, when Berlin was the victor over Barcelona. (We're not counting the 1984 Olympics in which Los Angeles basically ran unopposed.)

2) Don't call it an upset. Chicago wasn't the favorite because its bid was any stronger than the other cities, it was the favorite because oddsmakers set the lines that way. Those lines aren't made with the intention of gauging future events but to encourage equivalent wagering. The truth is, there's no way to accurately predict what 94 people will do on a secret ballot.

Oddsmakers said Chicago was the favorite and the media followed suit. But the city's bid was a paper champion, sort of like when a college football team is ranked No. 1 in the preseason based solely on assumptions and guesswork. Chicago wasn't the favorite for any tangible reason. That status was more of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more that people talked about Chicago being a favorite, the more it fed the belief that the city was the favorite. Chalk it up to good ol' American hubris.

3) Even if the whispers of Asian vote-hoarding are true, it wouldn't have mattered. One IOC member (who is Australian, it should be noted) suggested that Chicago's elimination in the first round was due to Asian members of the IOC casting throwaway votes for Tokyo in an attempt to get the American city off the ballot. Let's say this is true. First of all, so what? Chicago practically invented rigged elections so they should be well acquainted with how votes can be manipulated. More importantly, vote-hoarding wouldn't have mattered. Let's assume that those who didn't vote for Tokyo weren't going to vote for Chicago anyway. That would have sent Tokyo home in the first, but Chicago still would have only received 18 votes in the second.

4) Winning a round of voting is the kiss of death. Madrid led after the first round of voting, which marks the fourth time in the last six Summer Olympic votes that a city which has led at least one round of voting has failed to get the bid.

5) Backers of Chicago and Tokyo moved over to Rio's side. Madrid only earned four more votes in the final (32) than it did in the first round (28), suggesting that the voters who went for Tokyo and Chicago overwhelmingly supported the eventual winning bid.

6) The only thing more overrated than Chicago's chances was the importance of Barack Obama's visit. Leave your politics at the door for this one. This has nothing to do with red state or blue state, democrat or republican. What I'm about to write is purely about IOC politics: The president's visit was always overrated. Every other leader had planned to be in attendance, so Obama would have been conspicuous in his absence. By waiting so long Obama made his trip to Denmark a big story, but that may have had the reverse effect on voters who may have thought the president was trying to big-time the IOC. (And nobody big-times the IOC. Those guys have egos so big they'd make Rahm Emanuel blush.)

As I wrote earlier today, even Barack Obama couldn't sway the anti-American factions of the IOC. (And, to be clear, "anti-American" refers to Olympics politics, not any real hatred of the United States.) There was a huge miscalculation by Obama's people and the USOC in thinking that he had a chance to make a difference in this vote. All the time it was thought that if Obama could change the minds of two or three voters he could deliver Chicago. Nobody ever expected him to switch (or need to switch) 32 votes.

7) President Lula was the most charismatic politician in Copenhagen. An American president stole the show at the bid meetings Friday, but it wasn't the one you'd have thought. Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva gave a riveting speech today to the IOC, imploring the organization to reverse years of neglect of countries outside the normal Olympics sphere:

"I honestly think it is Brazil's turn. It is South America's bid. This is a continent that has never held the Games. It is time to address this imbalance. It is time to light the Olympic cauldron in a tropical country."

8) It's time to change the Olympic bidding process. Chicago 2016 spent $50 million on its unsuccessful bid; Madrid, $40 million. And, for all that, IOC voting members didn't once visit the city because of the bribery scandal that erupted from the bidding for the 2002 Winter Olympics. There has to be a better way to do this. (Cue the column saying the Olympics should be held at a permanent site, which, the more I think about it, isn't a bad idea.)

9) Chicago is the Second City once again. Chicago got 18 votes in the first round of voting today. In the vote for the 2012 Olympics, New York City earned 19. (And that was in a five-way vote.)

10) Rio 2016 is just 2,499 days away. For two weeks in the summer of 2016, Rio de Janeiro will be at the center of the world's stage. The proposed starting date is August 5 (but that's subject to change), which means it's just under 2,500 days until the Opening Ceremony. It should be one heck of a party.