USOC tabs Boston as potential host for 2024 Olympic Games

The U.S. Olympic Committee on Thursday announced it will move forward with a bid from Boston to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Move over, Hunger Games. The Chowdah Games may be coming soon.

The United States Olympic Committee announced Thursday that it has selected Boston to represent the U.S. in the bidding process to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

According to the release, the decision came after more than one round of voting before Boston eventually gained unanimous approval from the USOC board of directors.

More from Olympics

“We’re excited about our plans to submit a bid for the 2024 Games and feel we have an incredibly strong partner in Boston that will work with us to present a compelling bid,” USOC chairman Larry Probst said. “We’re grateful to the leaders in each of the four cities for their partnership and interest in hosting the most exciting sports competition on earth.”

Los Angeles was also a contender to host its third Olympic Games, while San Francisco and Washington were also considered.

The U.S. has hosted the Olympic Games (the summer variety) four times—1904 in St. Louis, 1932 and 1984 in Los Angeles and 1996 in Atlanta.

The International Olympic Committee has changed the structure of the bidding process. They will meet with representatives of each applicant city in October in Switzerland to establish protocols for the bidding and cities will then have until Jan. 8, 2016, to submit final bids.

The 2016 Olympic Games will be in Rio de Janeiro—two years after torrential rains and civil unrest threatened the World Cup last summer—and the 2020 Games will return to Tokyo for the second times. The Japanese capital also hosted the Games in 1964.

Rome has already submitted a bid for the 2024 games.

There are reports of potential bids coming from Nairobi, Kenya; Casablanca, Morocco; and Durban, South Africa. Doha, Qatar, is also reportedly interested, along with Melbourne, Australia, and the European cities of Paris, Berlin, Hamburg/Copenhagen, Saint Petersburg, Budapest, Istanbul and Baku, Azerbaijan.

Having the Games in Boston, particularly under the IOC’s new guidelines which try to help ensure that governments don’t go permanently bankrupt building dozens of palatial new facilities, would be a first for the Northeast and New England, and it would be in the summer (pronounced “summah” by the locals), when the danger of frostbite will be minimal.

Seriously, it would be tremendously cool to have the Games back in the U.S. (and by that I mean the actual Games, not the freeze-your-huddled-masses-off winter variety).

I mean, the steeplechasers of the world have to do their thing somewhere. Why not here?

More from FanSided

Home/Olympics