REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – The United States Olympic Committee board of directors unanimously approved a U.S. bid to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the USOC announced today. Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., remain under consideration, with the selection of a U.S. bid city to be made in early 2015.
The decision came after representatives from each of the four cities presented plans to the USOC board of directors following six months of collaborative discussions regarding the technical elements required to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Those discussions will continue in the weeks ahead as the USOC moves toward announcing a candidate city.
“We are excited to announce our plans to put forth a bid for the 2024 Games and look forward to taking the next step of selecting from a group of four world-class cities to present a compelling and successful bid,” said USOC Chairman Larry Probst. “We’re grateful to the civic and political leaders in each of the four cities for the partnership that’s been demonstrated thus far, and confident that the deliberative process we’ve put in place is going to result in a strong U.S. bid that can truly serve the athletes and the Olympic and Paralympic movements.”
“All four cities have presented plans that are part of the long-term visions for their communities,” said USOC CEO Scott Blackmun. “At our request, and because of the preliminary nature of our discussions, the cities have not spoken about their bids publicly in great detail. That will be an important part of the process after we make our selection in January.”
The International Olympic Committee’s deadline for 2024 bid submissions is Sept. 15, 2015, with the host city to be determined in 2017. The timeline for the 2024 bidding process was announced during the IOC Extraordinary Session in early December, during which time the Olympic Agenda 2020 was finalized. Among the 40 recommendations – which were all unanimously approved – the reform package allows for a more flexible and cost-effective bidding process.
The U.S. has not hosted the summer edition of the Olympic and Paralympic Games since 1996 (Atlanta). St. Louis hosted in 1904 and Los Angeles held the Games in both 1932 and 1984.
Above is a press release from the USOC.
A couple things for certain. 1) Bet against Obama’s favorite pick, whichever one that may be. 2) No way for LA. The incompetent legislature and local officials are channeling at least 16 billion toward the low speed train to nowhere. No bucks, No Olympics.
My bet is Boston.
DC would be a mess for various reasons, including two deal breakers: weather and security. But it would have plenty of support by all the transplants aka Congressmen looking to do something public with their time and power.
SF is very unlikely. In 2002, a close friend’s mother, at the time a VP at Sun Microsystems, led the SF bid for 2012. At one point it was down to SF and Chitown. What everyone didn’t know was that she had concluded that there was about a 0% chance that the city of SF and its residents would allow the games to be held there. I swear you could see the protesters’ eyes light up from… Read more »
I would agree with that analysis. SF would be ideal save for the factor that almost nothing is suited to put into the city proper. The Bay Area can spread events out into the Santa Clara county, East Bay and North Bay but I am not sure the Olympic Committee would advocate having the Games spread over that large an area with little to no events in the host city itself.
Totally agree with your points on LA transportation logistics and on DC with the diabolical summer weather and security involved. Boston is most logical on this list.