King, First Lady and President woo votes

U.S. first lady Michelle Obama arrives at Copenhagen Airport, September 30, 2009.

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A Spanish King, an American First Lady and a Brazilian President metaphorically rolled up their sleeves and got down to work on Wednesday, using charm and prestige to woo votes toward their ultimate Olympic prize.

Copenhagen airport's red carpet was rapidly furled and unfurled as King Juan Carlos, Michelle Obama and Luis Inacio Lula da Silva breezed in and got straight down to earnest meetings with International Olympic Committee (IOC) members who vote on Friday to decide the venue of the 2016 Summer Games.

Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo are the four candidates for the 2016 Olympics. The winner will be announced by IOC president Jacques Rogge shortly after 1630 GMT (12:30 p.m. EDT) on Friday after a day of presentations and voting by more than 100 IOC members.

London bookmakers made Chicago the favorites after Monday's announcement that U.S. President Barack Obama would fly in on Friday to join his wife in making the Chicago presentation.

Chicago were quoted at 8/11 on by William Hill with Rio next on 9/4, Tokyo at 8/1 and Madrid the outsider at 16/1.

The First Lady lined up a daunting schedule of one-on-one meetings with IOC members in the 48 hours leading up to the vote and was at their hotel shortly after arrival.

"I'm so happy to be here. I'm so excited," she told a media throng awaiting her at the hotel. "We have got a lot of work to do. We are not taking anything for granted. So I am going to go and talk to some voters."

FIRST LADY

Several IOC members were also waiting for her in the hotel lobby as the smiling First Lady waved to supporters.

King Juan Carlos also wasted little time in making an appearance at the hotel where he was promoting the merits of Madrid and President Lula held meetings to push the joy and spontaneity of Rio's campaign.

Japan's newly elected prime minister Yukio Hatoyama was due in the Danish capital on Thursday to back the Tokyo bid.

Not everyone was impressed with the favorites, however.

"We cannot afford the games in the city. The city is broke," said Martin Macias Jr. of the No Games Chicago group, standing in the lobby of the official IOC hotel as bid leaders, including Chicago's Patrick Ryan, mingled with IOC members only a few meters away.

The group has attended several IOC meetings in the past year to express opposition to the bid.

Former IOC vice-president Dick Pound of Canada also pondered whether President Obama, who is taking a huge political gamble by associating himself so closely with the Chicago bid, was doing the right thing.

"That's a risk," he said. "You have the leader of the free world flying halfway across the world (to support Chicago's bid). Is it a good use of his time?

"It is a little too soon (to predict a winner). I don't think there is a favorite. Certainly you could have three winners. Four is a stretch," he said, declining to name the outsider.

(Additional reporting by Karolos Grohmann and Kevin Fylan in Copenhagen; Editing by Ed Osmond)