Report: Rome to ditch 2024 Olympics bid, door open for Los Angeles
The Italian dream of hosting the 2024 Olympics is set to be destroyed as the new mayor of Rome prepares to announce the city’s withdrawal from the selection process.
The new mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, is poised to announce that Rome will formally end their bid to host an Olympic Games for the first time since 1960 to focus on other pressing matters affecting the country.
Raggi is a well-known opponent of Rome’s 2024 ambitions. During her election campaign earlier this year, the 38-year-old stressed that her city should focus on meeting their own financial needs first before hosting the biggest sporting event in the world. Rome currently has a gigantic debt of £13.6bn. According to Italian news outlet La Repubblica, an announcement of Rome’s withdrawal could come as early as tomorrow.
Rome’s withdrawal comes seven months after a poll found that almost 80% of the Italian population supported the bid. Research poll conducted by IPSOS interview 2200 people and recorded a 77% support rate.
The 2022 effect
It is not the first time that a country has pulled out of the bidding process for the Olympic Games. The competition to host the 2022 Winter Olympics was marred by withdrawals. Poland, Ukraine and Sweden all withdrew their bids due to a variety of issues. Norway was also forced to withdraw their bid after their governing political party refused to support the campaign due to financial concerns and low public support.
As a results of the mass withdrawal, China was elected as the host city after beating Kazakhstan by four votes (44-40) at the 128th International Olympic Committee session in Malaysia.
Los Angeles aims to capitalize
The likely withdrawal of Rome means that three cities will be battling it out to host the event. Los Angeles (USA), Paris (France) and Budapest (Hungary) still remain in contention.
One of the cities to receive the highest amount of local support is Los Angeles, with 81% of residents supporting their bid. The city is bidding to host the first American summer Olympic Games since Atlanta in 1996. The Mayor of the city, Eric Garcetti, recently traveled to Rio to push his city’s Olympic bid and pledged that the multi-million dollar proposal would benefit the public.
“We won’t build things for the Olympics and hope they benefit the people of L.A. We are building things for the people of L.A. already and we hope that they will benefit the Olympics in turn,” Garcetti recently told CBS.
The host of the 2024 Games will be decided on September 17th, 2017 at an IOC election event in Lima, Peru.