Sep 21, 2015 Budapest, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Paris and Rome were recently unveiled as potential candidates to host the 2024 summer Olympics games. According to Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympics committee, the body is set to conduct its own research to judge public support for the five bidding cities.
“The IOC is pleased to welcome five outstanding cities to a very strong competition about hosting the Olympic Games 2024,” Bach said
The IOC faced a disappointing campaign for the 2022 Winter Games after St Moritz/Davos, Munich and Krakow pulled out of the race after public referendums voted against their bid. So in an attempt to revive interest, the committee has adopted a series of reforms under the banner ‘Agenda 2020’.
“The IOC wants to send the athletes only in cities in which they are welcome. This is why public support for a candidature is so important. How a candidate city expresses this public support, is its own choice. The IOC wants to be sure. Not only to be sure, we also want to be objective and ensure a fair competition between the five candidates cities. That is why we are going to do our own confidential poll. This will allow us to compare the public support between the five cities,” Bach said.
The committee president went on to say that the new bidding process, which included an invitation phase where candidate cities could discuss their bid with the IOC, is a success.
“We can already see clearly in the invitation phase, in the dialogue between IOC and candidates cities, that these five cities developed a vision for their cities, they developed a project: how the Olympic Games can serve as a catalyst to make this vision for their city coming true.”
Under the new rules, candidate cities also have to fulfill requirements on anti-discrimination and labor rights.