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Tory ‘nowhere near’ deciding on Olympic bid

On Tuesday, Mayor John Tory met with head of the Canadian Olympic Committee to discuss the biding process.

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The United States did not make a bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, which were awarded to Tokyo in 2013.

Initial bids are due to the global Olympic Committee on Sept. 15., but the committee won’t announce the 2024 host until September 2017.

A recent poll has shown that Torontonians support of a bid for the 2024 Olympic Games, but one group named NoTO2024 says Toronto should think twice about bidding for the Games.

USOC officials also said the cost concerns that led Boston to back out of the bid were not an issue in Los Angeles.

With just over a month left to enter the race to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, Toronto’s mayor says he is “nowhere near” deciding whether the city will throw its hat in the ring. In the wake of Boston’s embarrassing collapse and the IOC’s dearth of viable choices for the 2022 Winter Games (Beijing beat out Almaty, Kazakhstan), there was private and then public pressure on the USOC to submit someone, anyone for 2024 despite Paris being considered the front-runner followed by several other European cities. Mayor Eric Garcetti has said he’d have no problem signing the host city contract that the mayor in Boston refused to sign. The last Summer Games were held in Los Angeles in 1984.

A study from the University of Oxford on Olympic proportions found that costs for Olympic Games overrun with 100 percent consistency.

“This victory for the people of Boston is the result of tireless work of numerous activists and residents across the city, region and state speaking up against this anti-democratic land grab”, said the statement. Instead of constantly moving the Games around, they may create a handful of permanent venues around the world and rotate the Games between them. That became a major sticking point as the Boston bid disintegrated.

The U.S. viewing public pays for the Games-and that helps Toronto.

Public hearings seeking your input on hosting the games expected to take place soon, they said.

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Tory said he is also awaiting “facts and figures” on the success of the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games and seeking information on whether numerous venues built for those games, including the aquatics centre in Scarborough and the velodrome in Milton, could be used during a potential Olympics.

John Tory