U.S. Olympic Committee To Pick 2024 Olympics Candidate City Thursday

Photo Courtesy: Guy Rhodes-USA TODAY Sports

COLORADO SPRINGS – After losing out on two of the past three Summer Olympic bids, the U.S. Olympic Committee wants to host the 2024 Olympics, and is looking for a city that will convince the International Olympic Committee to bring the world’s biggest sporting event back to the United States in 2024. That city will be announced Thursday after a private meeting of the USOC in Denver.

Four cities were shortlisted in June after the USOC spent a year viewing presentations from nearly three dozen candidates. Representatives from the organizing committees in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. are hoping to hear their city called out Thursday, setting up an intense international battle with other cities interested in hosting the 2024 Olympics. Germany wants to host the event, and France has publicly announced an intent to pick a candidate city.

Of the four American cities, only Los Angeles has previous experience hosting the Olympics in 1932 and 1984. San Francisco was in the running as a candidate city for the 2012 Olympics but lost out to New York City as the official American submission. New York lost out to London for that bid. Boston and Washington are presenting their first-ever bids for an Olympics.

Chicago was believed to be the strong choice for the 2016 Olympics, but the IOC gave it to Rio de Janeiro in a quest to bring the Games to South America for the first time. In order to gear up for another Olympic bid, the USOC sat out of the 2020 submission process, which eventually went to Tokyo.

The IOC won’t announce the 2024 Olympic host until 2017, but the USOC’s announcement Thursday will give the lucky city plenty of time to organize a strong bid presentation that would include cost proposals and facility use. In terms of aquatic sports, only Los Angeles has suitable facilities as the Uytengsu Aquatic Center could host water polo, synchronized swimming or diving. That facility hosted all aquatic sport competitions in 1984, but does not currently have the spectator seating capacity for swimming, which would need to approach 100,000 seats.

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Kyle

9 years ago

Los Angeles 2024!