International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach visited Paris this week, saying he was impressed by the unity of France’s bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games.
“The Paris bid is a very, very strong bid because of the unity and the large support it is sparking off,” Bach said in an ABCNews piece about his visit. “Personally, I’m very impressed by the unity among both the sporting and political worlds.”
“This has not always been the case with the previous French bids,” he continued.
Paris entered bids for the 1992, 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics and narrowly missed hosting those 2012 Games that wound up in London, according to XinhuaNet.com. The nation did not bid on the 2020 Olympics, but is one of three cities still in the bid hunt for 2024.
The unity of a city and nation behind a bid is becoming more and more important as a large number of bids have recently fallen off due to lack of local support. That list includes Boston, Toronto, Hamburg and most recently Rome, where the city council voted down its bid late last month.
With Rome bowing out, the IOC is now considering Paris, Los Angeles (which replaced Boston as the American bid) and Budapest to host the 2024 event. The 2020 Olympics are set to take place in Tokyo, Japan.
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