One year left to compete for Olympic 2024 bid cities

One year left to compete for Olympic 2024 bid cities

LAUSANNE - Budapest, Los Angeles, Paris and Rome have exactly one year to convince the International Olympic Committee (IOC) they are the most suitable city to host the Summer Olympics in 2024.

Over the coming 12 months, the four cities in competition will finalise their candidacies and host visits from the IOC's evaluation commission

Just weeks after the end of the Rio Games, and with the 2020 event to be held in Tokyo, the IOC revealed it will announce the bid winner for the 2024 Games in Lima on September 13, 2017.

Over the coming 12 months, the four cities will finalise their candidacies and host visits from the IOC's evaluation commission.

The commission, headed by former Namibian sprinter Frankie Fredericks, will report back to IOC members in July after having travelled to all four cities to examine the candidacies.

IOC president Thomas Bach's Agenda 2020 aims to make the Olympic Games cheaper for cities to run by letting them use a greater number of existing facilities.

That has boosted Budapest's bid, which has the complete backing of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Hungary, which has stressed its strategic position in central Europe, was one of the founding members of the IOC in 1895. It has been eighth in the medal table since the Games started in 1896 and is the only country in the top 10 never to have organised an Olympic Games.

While "mega-cities" Beijing, London and Rio de Janeiro have hosted the last three Olympics and the next will go to Tokyo, Budapest, with a population of 1.7 million and designated European city of sport for 2019, would offer a change in direction.

Los Angeles has hosted the Olympics twice, in 1932 and 1984, and has taken up the US baton from Boston.

The Californian city boasts that it already has the necessary sporting installations, with the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, already used in the city's two previous Olympics, to be renovated and athletes to be hosted on the UCLA campus.

Weighing on input from Silicon Valley's innovators, Los Angeles' bid could also be boosted by the fact that the NBC television network have bought the rights to show the Games between 2021-32.

- Iconic city venues -

Paris will be seeking to make it fourth time lucky after unsuccessfully pitching for the Olympics in 1992, 2008 and 2012.

The French capital's bid has political backing from city mayor Anne Hidalgo and President Francois Hollande.

It has also drafted in ex-international sports stars such as triple Olympic canoe champion Tony Estanguet and seasoned administrators like Bernard Lapasset, who pushed the introduction of rugby sevens at the Rio Games in his role as president of the then-International Rugby Board (IRB, now World Rugby).

Paris, which last hosted the Games in 1924, has adopted an approach based on lasting development, with 95 percent of the proposed sites already in place and the idea of using iconic city centre venues as London did in 2012.

IOC members in Rio had one overriding concern about Paris: the series of terror attacks that have rocked the country since January 2015.

Rome has also hosted the Games, in 1960, but needs to overcome some stubborn political intransigeance.

The city voted in a new mayor in July, Virginia Raggi, who was quick to say that hosting the Games would not be a priority for a city currently in debt to the amount of 13 billion euros.

Around 70 percent of sporting sites are already in place, and the Eternal City would guarantee some eye-catching events in iconic places.

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