Boston Doesn't Want The 2024 Olympics

Boston mayor Marty Walsh essentially torpedoed the city’s bid for hosting the 2024 Olympics today, believing that agreeing to the United States Olympic Committee’s terms could put the city under financial strain.

Walsh said that at this time, he didn’t feel comfortable agreeing to the requirements for a hosting bid, especially the part where the host city would have to guarantee covering the cost of any shortfalls. Per Boston.com:

“If committing to signing a guarantee today is what’s required to move forward, then Boston is no longer pursuing the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Walsh said Monday.

USOC CEO Scott Blackmun also released a statement announcing the end of the bid. An excerpt:

During our telephonic meeting today, the board was briefed on our recent discussions with the Governor, the Mayor and Boston 2024 Chair Steve Pagliuca. We also took the opportunity to consider the remarks made by the Mayor at his press conference earlier today.

When Boston was selected in January of this year, we were excited about the possibility of partnering with Boston’s great universities in a bid that would take advantage of existing college facilities and spur the development of much-needed sport, transportation and residential infrastructure for the City of Boston. The cornerstone idea behind Boston’s bid was sound. We want to compliment and thank Steve Pagliuca and his team at Boston 2024 for the remarkable work they have done in the last two months to transform a powerful idea into a fiscally responsible reality that would have benefitted the City of Boston and America’s athletes for decades to come. Because of the good work of Boston 2024, we know that the Boston Games would have been good for Boston, just like the Olympic Games were good for Lake Placid, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Salt Lake City.

When we made the decision to bid for the 2024 Olympic Games, one of the guiding principles that we adopted was that we would only submit a bid that we believed could win.

Notwithstanding the promise of the original vision for the bid, and the soundness of the plan developed under Steve Pagliuca, we have not been able to get a majority of the citizens of Boston to support hosting the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Therefore, the USOC does not think that the level of support enjoyed by Boston’s bid would allow it to prevail over great bids from Paris, Rome, Hamburg, Budapest or Toronto.

Bostonians can now let the nightmares of Olympic traffic drift from their minds, and instead focus on the horrors of regular traffic.

[ Boston.com]

Photo: AP

Contact the author at [email protected].