The Italian government supports the bid, but needs the backing of the city council to press ahead.
Advertisement
Italian Olympic committee chief Giovanni Malago had been scheduled to meet Raggi on Wednesday, but he left city hall after waiting for half an hour, saying she had not turned up.
ROME (AP) Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi, who has long opposed the city’s bid to host the 2024 Olympics, will announce her decision on the candidacy on Wednesday.
Hosting the Olympics could quickly turn from a “dream” into a “nightmare”, Virginia Raggi said, describing the Games hosted by London, Sydney and Athens as “a global flop” because of the amount of money they cost.
“We have nothing against the Olympics and sport … but we don’t want sport to be an excuse for more rivers of cement in the city”.
“Pulling out now, after two years of promoting ourselves and asking for trust and support around the world, hardly makes us credible”, Malago told reporters at a hastily-arranged news conference at the committee’s headquarters in Rome. She said she was merely being consistent with her campaign position.
Hailed as the poster girl of the Five Star Movement, Raggi has had a chaotic three months in office since being elected in June. He has said the bid would be doomed if Rome’s mayor doesn’t support it.
But Raggi added: “Boston, Hamburg and Madrid all had strong reasons to oppose hosting the (2024) Games”. “We can see what is left from recent “big events” that were supposed to revive the country: the unfinished construction sites of Rome 2009 World Swimming Championships, infrastructure abandoned from the Winter Games in Turin in 2006, the failure of Expo Milano 2015, flop of the Pescara 2009 Mediterranean Games, the endless Aquila natural disaster reconstruction; the poured concrete on the island La Maddalena in Sardinia that was supposed to host the G8 in 2009″.
Rome hosted the Olympics in 1960 while four years ago then Prime Minister Mario Monti withdrew its bid for 2020 for financial reasons.
It could also be another stinging blow for the IOC’s “Olympic Agenda 2020” program, which was created to make bidding for and hosting the games more flexible and more affordable. As the first female Mayor of the Eternal City, she is determined to get Rome’s house in order. Boston dropped out of the race a year ago and voters in Hamburg rejected the city’s 2024 bid in a referendum.
The Sochi winter Games in 2014 spiralled to over $51 billion (45.6bn euros).
Planned 2022 bids by Munich and St. Moritz-Davos in Switzerland were dropped earlier.
“It’s very upsetting”, bid vice president Luca Pancalli said after Raggi’s announcement.
In the bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, L.A. and Paris are now head-to-head in the final leg of the race.
Advertisement
Raggi succeeded the controversial Ignazio Marino in October 2015 after promising to “fight corruption and bring back Rome’s splendour”.
