Organising committees from Budapest, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Paris, and Rome have put their hands up to host the 2024 Olympic Games.
No cities from Hungary have ever hosted the Summer Games.
Germany has hosted two with Berlin in 1936, and Munich in 1972.
The Americans have hosted four Olympics – St Louis 1904, and Atlanta in 1996, while Los Angeles has been successful twice in 1932 and 1984.
Paris is having a third crack at hosting the Olympics after 1900 and 1924.
And Rome has the experience of hosting the 1960 Games to call on.
The time frame is all five cities must lodge US$50,000 for Stage 1 by next month.
Another $US$50,000 for Stage 2 by July 2016.
And US$150,000 by January 2017 for Stage 3, with the final decision to be handed down at the 130th IOC Session in Lima, Peru in September 2017.
Those stage payments are pure petty cash.
The reality is hosting the Olympics has become so expensive, it’s staggering five cities are keen to be in the mix. And if history is to repeat itself, staging the 2024 Olympics will be at a crippling cost.
Rio de Janeiro has fallen well behind schedule and is in financial difficulties for next year’s Olympics because of the rising costs, but Tokyo seems to be on time and budget for the 2020 Games – so far.
No wonder IOC president Thomas Bach has welcomed the five contenders.
Bach is a very low-key supremo compared to his successors – Jacques Rogge and Juan Antonio Samaranch.
Rogge was brilliant from 2001 to 2013, cleaning up the mess and corruption of Samaranch who very nearly brought the IOC to its knees during his watch from 1980 to 2001.
Trying to be transparent, the IOC website makes an extraordinary claim.
“The IOC is a not-for-profit independent international organisation made up of volunteers who are committed to the building of a better world.
“The IOC redistribute more than 90% of its income to the wider sporting movement. That translates to the equivalent of US$3.25 million every day to assist athletes and sports organisations at all levels around the world”.
Every day?
Maybe the writer wasn’t too flash speaking, or writing, English.
But the Olympic Games has always been one of the greatest sporting spectacles every four years.
It’s up to the organisers of struggling Rio to lift their game to make sure the Olympic Games image remains on the top shelf.
Or the five cities bidding for 2024 may not have an Olympic Games to host.
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