HAMMOND | Lake County could greatly benefit from Chicago landing the 2016 Summer Olympics, the Lake County Convention and Visitors Bureau was told Wednesday.

Jeanne Picariello, chairwoman of the Multi-Sport Organizations Council of the United States Olympic Committee, told a Tourism Day Luncheon audience at the Indiana Welcome Center that the county should begin promoting itself as a potential site to host training centers and other spillover from the Olympics, if Chicago is chosen as the site.

"This Lake County region is absolutely ideal for spillover from the games. Your rivals on the other side of (Chicago) in Kane County are already marketing themselves as having direct mass transit access to the city," Picariello said.

She cited the hospitality industry as the backbone of the Olympics and other sporting events and demonstrated the magnitude that sports travel, for amateur and professional sports, has on the overall economy.

Using data from the Travel Institute of America, she said sports travel makes up 5 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product and is becoming the most important force in the travel business.

"The sports travel portion of the industry is changing. It is close to a $206 billion part of the industry, Picariello said.

She also spoke on emerging trends in national sports that Lake County potentially could tap into for economic benefits.

The fastest-growing sport in the nation is tai chi/yoga, which has seen a growth of more than 118 percent in the last five years, she said, adding other rapidly growing sports are skateboarding, martial arts, cheerleading, kayaking and rock wall climbing.

Other emerging areas of sports that Picariello touted as offering potential were sporting events for challenged individuals, as well as The National Senior Games and such recently sanctioned Olympic events as ballroom dancing, rugby and polo.

She also urged such organizations as the bureau to begin developing ties with local universities and colleges to develop sports marketing and management programs to provide a work force of people trained to handle world class sporting events.

Speros Batistatos, bureau CEO, long has been a proponent of bring Olympics-related events to the region and has suggested the possibility of table tennis, rowing, weight-lifting and archery.