Washington, D.C. To Bid For 2024 Olympics?

ABC News is reporting that some business leaders in the Washington, D.C. area are pushing the idea of putting in a bid for the 2024 Olympics:

The inconveniences of the daily routine in the nation’s capital will be a selling point as Washington, D.C., makes a push to host the 2024 Olympics.

“We are the safest and most secure city in the world,” said Bob Sweeney, president of DC 2024. “The largest expense of any Olympic Games is security, and the fact that we’ve got it pretty built in to our everyday life here in Washington, we would leverage that asset tremendously to put on this high-profile event.”

Sweeney announced Tuesday the formation of a nonprofit group aimed at making D.C. the first American city to host the Summer Games since Atlanta in 1996, and the first to host an Olympics since the Winter Games were held in Salt Lake City in 2002.

The bid has a long way to go. Washington was one of 35 U.S. cities to receive a letter from the U.S. Olympic Committee to gauge interest, and Sweeney expects about 10 to step forward as serious candidates. The USOC hasn’t even decided for certain that it wants to bid for the 2024 Games, which will be awarded by the International Olympic Committee in 2017.

“They need to make sure there is a strong horse to ride,” Sweeney said. “And we certainly intend to be that.”

Los Angeles, which hosted the 1932 and 1984 Olympics, Philadelphia and Tulsa, Okla., have announced their interest. San Diego wants to host a cross-border Olympics with Mexican neighbor Tijuana. Other potential 2024 contenders from around the world include Paris; Rome; Doha, Qatar; and a city in South Africa.

Washington made a push for the 2012 Games a decade ago and was thought to be the favorite to be the U.S. representative, but the USOC chose New York instead.

If there’s any place in America that would make a worse venue for something like the Summer Olympics than the New York City Metro area, it’s the D.C. Metro area. As a side benefit, though, it could bring the entire city to a halt for two weeks. So, maybe we should consider it.

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Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Neil Hudelson says:

    San Diego wants to host a cross-border Olympics with Mexican neighbor Tijuana.

    Has this been done before? It’s a great idea, fitting with the purpose of The Olympics.

  2. Mikey says:

    I can’t even begin to imagine the traffic nightmare this would incur. I’d have to go on vacation and watch the Olympics on TV.

  3. Rob in CT says:

    Just thinking about the security precautions that would be deemed necessary makes me vaguely ill.

  4. DC Loser says:

    I’ll stock up and ride it out in my basement.

  5. Tyrell says:

    Safest city? I don’t know about that. How about the financial costs? Does the city have the funds to pay for all of the work or will taxpayers have to foot the bill for another entertainment/sports boondoggle that most of them will not be able to afford to go to ?

  6. Tillman says:

    I am totally okay with the United States being the world’s hegemon. Lot of benefits to hegemony, and it comes without the demerits of having to actually rule the world.

    I wish we could be smart about it, though, and not bother attempting to get the Olympic Games in our cities. It’s just not profitable economically, and we don’t have a “culture” to export via the Games that isn’t exported in every other possible media extant.