The worldwide Olympic Committee remains confident the United States will deliver a bid to host the 2024 Summer Games despite Boston’s withdrawal from the race on Monday.
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“I intend to engage in broad consultation, beginning with members of city council, with regards to what we should do (about) the Olympic bid”, the civic leader added Monday.
That could be 2026, he said, if the U.S. Olympic Committee doesn’t choose another bid city to compete against a long list of worldwide contenders for the Sumer Games by the September 15 deadline. He said he needed more time to study the bid before deciding whether to come out in favor.
“We were all excited when (Boston) was announced, but it seems to have stumbled since,” said John Coates, vice president of the global Olympic Committee, who was in Kuala Lumpur for an IOC meeting. He spoke with USOC leaders Monday and told them he’d do things on his own timeline. At his news conference, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said the opposition to the Olympics amounted to about “10 people on Twitter”. Walsh said he would not sign a contract “that puts one dollar of taxpayer money on the line for one penny of overruns on the Olympics”. Now, the pressure is on Los Angeles city officials to renew their bid, or risk losing the summer games to Rome, Paris, Hamburg, or Budapest.
As Boston drops out of the running to host the 2024 Olympics, Los Angeles finds itself as a possible frontrunner to host the games for the third time.
Olympic bids need strong support from key city leaders.
Boston’s bid was in trouble nearly as soon as the USOC chose the New England city in January ahead of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington.
The Games are the world’s best-loved sporting event, but they are much more than that. Many viewed the chance to host the Summer Olympics as a curse that would leave the city inundated with traffic during the games and shackled by debt and underused state-of-the-art sports facilities afterwards.
“If not, then 2026 makes a lot of sense, and I think the USOC would be ready to pursue that”, Bullock said. “As a result, we have reached a mutual agreement to withdraw Boston’s bid”. Those organizing Boston’s bid didn’t endear themselves such as when it was revealed that former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick would be earning ,500 a day for his services.
Last week, the release of Boston’s unredacted original plan caused some embarrassment, in part because it downplayed the possibility of a referendum that would allow voters to weigh in on their approval or disapproval of the Olympics.
In the meantime, Walsh said it was worth scuttling the Olympic bid to ensure financial responsibility.
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The absence of a U.S. candidate “would mean that there would only be one North American for the Games, and obviously that is a simpler situation”, said John Furlong, who led the bid and the organizing committee for the Vancouver Winter Games.
