The 2024 Olympic Games are quickly turning from “global spectacle that world cities would fall over themselves to host,” to “poisoned chalice that only the stupidest would drink from.”
With the 2020 Summer Olympics set to run with watch-like precision and efficiency in Tokyo, finding a home for the next summer olympiad is proving to be more trouble than anyone ever thought.
Budapest, Hungary has now joined the long, illustrious list of cities that have withdrawn bids for the 2024 Games, amid a torrid global political and economic climate, increasing calls for the Games to be installed at a permanent home to avoid underprepared economies from shouldering the massive financial burden of hosting a games.
Budapest’s withdrawn bid now leaves the 2024 Games with just two potential suitors: Los Angeles, and Paris. Of those, LA seems the more likely of the two cities to score the gig; the city is running their platform on the basis of utilising pre-existing facilities and infrastructure in order to deliver a cost-effective games, as opposed to the massive spending that has dogged previous host cities like Rio and Beijing.
Paris‘ bid is being run on the concept of the centenary anniversary of the last time the French capital hosted the games: way back in 1924. If successful, Paris would become only the second city to host the games three times, following on from London‘s third tilt in 2012.
Budapest’s scuttled bid came at the hands of a petition circulated among citizens which gathered enough signatures to trigger a referendum on the issue, leaving bid organisers to assert that the bid had “no chance” of success.
This latest withdrawal, due to financial concerns, follows similar abandoned bids from Rome, Hamburg, Boston, and a rash of expected bids that did not manifest (including Melbourne, which is likely to instead focus any bid attention on the 2028 or 2032 Olympics).
The IOC now has a flip-of-the-coin decision to make come September 13th, when they will announce the host of the 2020 Games – one which they have mandated must be run more or less on the smell of an oily rag thanks to their cost-cutting ‘Agenda 2020‘ push.
Critics of the bidding process have been amplifying calls to install the games at a permanent home, like its ancestral home of Athens, to avoid embarrassing issues precisely like this in the future.
Either way, as far as the 2024 games is concerned, it’s now down to a two-horse race.
Source: News.com.au.
Photo: Shaun Botterill/Getty.
