As the IOC session where the host of the Winter Games no one wants draws closer, more and more candidates for 2024 are emerging. We already knew about a few of them (Boston, Hamburg, Rome), but Paris is on the verge of announcing its bid, with a couple others following closely behind. If nobody wants to host the 2022 Winter Games, the 2024 Summer Games are starting to look like just the opposite. This race could be just as competitive as the 2005 vote that saw London emerge victorious for the 2012 Games (London ended up being a big winner in more ways than one).
Hamburg's bid is still a little up in the air. The Germans are going to put it up to a public referendum. The polls currently show 64 percent for the bid, and IOC President Thomas Bach, of course, is German, so he'd obviously like to see a Hamburg bid move forward. I think it's highly likely that the referendum will pass and Hamburg will definitely stick around.
Rome isn't going anywhere, either. They were the first city to announce their intention to bid, and would probably have to be considered the favorite right now. That is, until Paris enters the race.
Paris hasn't had luck with Olympic bids recently. It finished second to Barcelona for 1992, which was the last year both the Summer and Winter Olympics were held in the same year. The winter vote was held first, so as soon as Albertville was awarded the Winter Games, Paris knew it was doomed. They bid again for 2008, but ran into the Beijing buzz saw that was all but guaranteed of victory before the other bids were even submitted. Then in that loaded 2012 race, Paris was viewed as the favorite the entire time, only to see London emerge victorious 54-50 in the final round. As a result, Paris sat out the bidding for 2016 and 2020.
This time it's different, though. They learned a lot by not participating in two bidding cycles (2016 was never going to be in Europe anyway, so that would've just been a waste of money), and they'll come back with an improved vision for the Olympics. The IOC's Agenda 2020, which is designed to make the bid process more sustainable, will be very good for Paris, a very compact city to begin with. But the use of temporary and existing venues that's now being encouraged is the big thing. And who doesn't want to see beach volleyball at the foot of the Eiffel Tower? They need to pick Paris for that alone.
France is hosting UEFA Euro 2016 and the 2019 Women's World Cup, so they're not shying away from the big events, which is usually viewed as preparation for an Olympic run. Paris is going to put forth a very strong bid, and there's some sense that the IOC owes them one. And to put it in a historical context, Paris would become the second city to host the Olympics three times (joining London), and 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the last time Paris hosted the Games. Needless to say, it's been a long time.
We're also likely to see some cities that have little to no chance enter the ring. Baku, Azerbaijan is currently hosting the inaugural European Games, which is seen as a precursor to another Olympic bid (they previously bid for 2020). Doha, of course, still thinks it can buy an Olympics. It worked with the World Cup, but the IOC isn't anywhere near as corrupt as FIFA. Besides, they're not going to have four Olympics in a row in Asia. (Moving the Games from the summer to whenever Doha would want to hold them wouldn't work for a lot of influential First World nations, either.)
Istanbul has a "bid until we win" approach that's eventually going to be successful. They haven't said if they're going to bid this time, but it wouldn't surprise anybody if they did. Istanbul almost won for 2020 and would be a serious contender for 2024. Budapest, meanwhile, wants to enter the race with no expectation of winning. They just want to get the experience they can build on for future Olympic bids. No confirmed bids from Africa, but Durban, South Africa (which I think is their most likely bid city) will have a very realistic shot of winning when it decides to bid for the Olympics. There's never been an Olympics in Africa and the IOC wants to change that. It probably won't be in 2024, though.
And that brings me to the elephant in the room. Boston. Everybody knew the U.S. would bid. But you have to question whether the USOC actually wants to host or not. The selection of Boston as the bid city was questionable to begin with, and that choice is looking worse and worse by the day. In an obvious attempt to appease the people of Massachusetts, where support isn't good and is waning, they've completely changed their plan and spread venues all around the state instead of centered in Boston. None of this is making the USOC look good.
Whether or not Boston stays in the race is irrelevant. There's no chance that the 2024 Olympics will be in Boston, so it would be almost better off pulling the plug. Some people want the USOC to switch the bid to Los Angeles, which finished second in the domestic competition, and would be much more appealing internationally. LA would have a shot at winning. Boston doesn't.
The question, though, is which would make the USOC look worse. Remember, the USOC intentionally hasn't bid since the embarrassment of Chicago 2016. Next year will be 20 years since Atlanta, and that streak of consecutive years without a U.S. Olympics will reach at least 28 years. So do you move forward with a Boston bid that has absolutely no public support and has little to no chance of winning? Or do you move on to your second choice, which has already hosted the Olympics twice and is plenty capable of doing it again? Or do you pull the plug on Boston, not submit LA as a backup and move on to 2026 (when a World Cup bid also seems likely)? Frankly, none of those options is really ideal.
No comments:
Post a Comment