U.S. Will Bid for 2024 Olympics, Possible Host City Still Up in the Air
The United States Olympic Committee said it would move forward in pursuit of hosting the 2024 Olympics following a Tuesday meeting in California, but it has not decided on a city to represent the bid.
USOC chair Larry Probst said during a Tuesday evening press conference that the committee plans to gather again in early January to further discuss the four candidate cities—Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.
Groups representing the four cities’ bids presented their proposals to the USOC Tuesday, including the Boston 2024 Partnership.
Boston 2024 released a statement following its presentation, reading in part:
“(W)e feel Boston made a very strong presentation to the committee that focuses on the many strengths of our city and region. This is the next step in what we hope will be a long and productive partnership with the USOC, as well as a thoughtful discussion about where we want to take our city in the coming decades.’’
Boston Mayor Martin Walsh, who was on-hand for the presentation, also seemed pleased with how things went, reports WBUR’s Curt Nickisch.
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No Boston Olympics, the group that has organized to oppose the bid, had a small presence outside the meeting Tuesday. The group used the online service TaskRabbit to hire a couple of people to hold a “No Boston Olympics’’ sign.
No Boston Olympics also sent out a newsletter to its email list on Tuesday evening calling on the USOC to award the bid elsewhere. Boston has experienced a robust debatein recent weeks about whether the city should host the Olympics, and whether there should be more transparency in the bidding process. This has reportedly not been matched in the other three U.S. candidate cities.
USOC officials declined to compare bids between the U.S. cities Tuesday night and called the current situation a “four-way tie.’’ Probst said the decision making process for the U.S. city would be “deliberate.’’ “We are going to pick the city that we think has the best chance’’ to win against bids from across the world, he said.
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