Only weeks ago, Boston was vying for the right to partner with the International Olympic Committee. Of course, since abandoning the Olympic bid in late July, residents have already been given plenty of reasons to be satisfied with their decision to say no to bringing the Summer Games to the local neighborhood.
Even the former representatives of Boston 2024 have undoubtedly looked on with disappointment at how the IOC has conducted itself over the past several weeks. For all of the optimism that was touted with the enactments of Agenda 2020, it seems the international stewards of the Olympics have already reverted back to old habits, with Boston jettisoning itself at the perfect time to laugh from a safely removed distance.
“We vote with our hearts, not with our heads”
Let’s start with the vote for the 2022 Winter Olympics.
After an embarrassing deterioration of candidate cities, the IOC was left in a tough spot, with Beijing and Almaty (Kazakhstan) as the only bids left standing. It was a false choice. Either choose the place that has no snow but has a history of delivering the Olympics (regardless of cost) or choose a place with snow that is as bountiful as its numerous human rights issues.
Ultimately, the IOC grudgingly chose Beijing. In the process, of course, an IOC member plainly admitted that they don’t choose the most logical (or frugal) bid, but instead that “we vote with our hearts, not with our heads.” So much for circling the wagons around Agenda 2020. That sounds like an endorsement of the kind of auction-style bidding process that landed the IOC in such a difficult spot in the first place.
And to further erode any confidence that the “old days” of auction-style are gone, the IOC also changed the rules to eliminate the shortlisting of bids. For the 2024 Summer Games selection, every city that enters a bid will make it to the final evaluation process and possibly the vote. A deeper field of bids only ups the competitiveness.
Head in the sand with Rio’s sewage
Rio, Brazil will host next summer’s 2016 Olympics. Even beyond the obvious financial debacle that was the 2014 World Cup (the stadium in the middle of the rainforest was always going to be a colossal waste), there are some very serious and pressing emergencies that the IOC is simply choosing not to confront.
On multiple waterways, Rio has a terrible issue with raw sewage. In fact, anyone who doubts the validity of the issue need only look at the insane situation that the US rowing team recently experienced. In Rio for a pre-Olympics test event (Junior World Championships), four coaches and 11 rowers fell seriously ill.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why, when considering the place that they’re rowing:
How did the IOC respond to this legitimate crisis? By sticking its head in the sand.
Instead of authorizing viral testing in the waters that are feared to contain “dangerously high levels of disease-causing viruses,” the IOC said that it would not even test. This decision came despite independent Associated Press testing that showed the waters are very much to blame for rowers and swimmers getting sick.
Again, it’s representative of the IOC saying one thing, but doing quite another. Practically in the same breath as they declare the “IOC puts on the highest priority the athletes,” it rejects a fairly basic measure in viral testing.
Rushing LA back into the race
Throughout Boston’s time as the USOC-endorsed bid, the rumor that Los Angeles would swoop in circulated multiple times. Even when USOC member Dan Doctoroff denied the LA story pointblank during the ill-fated Boston 2024 television debate, the story endured. Now, it appears that LA will, in fact, take over for Boston.
Yet, as multiple sources have confirmed to BostInno, the USOC never had discussions with LA while Boston was still the bid. The only pursuit of an LA bid came after Boston 2024 was pulled. The USOC, for all of the suspicion, never betrayed Boston until it formally decided it would no longer endorse its original choice for the 2024 U.S. bid.
In other words, the USOC (despite having no prior contact with LA) was pushed to find a replacement bid, in part because of pressure from the IOC. Only hours after Boston’s bid ended, IOC President Thomas Bach explained his wish for the U.S. to still enter a bid.
“For the IOC this was always about an American bid put forward by the United States Olympic Committee,'” Bach declared in a statement after Boston 2024’s demise. “This invitation phase is also an opportunity to determine which city will eventually be chosen by an NOC. We are confident that USOC will choose the most appropriate city for a strong U.S. bid.”
Other IOC members all expressed the same view. They were united in pressuring the USOC. Now, LA will march forward with a bid that is far from properly vetted.
Conclusion
Even in the short period of time since Boston 2024 collapsed, the IOC has already gone a long way to vindicating Bostonians in their choice to reject the Olympic bid. The organization has also been brutally efficient in betraying the trust that members of the Boston’s bid clearly placed in the IOC as they pitched things like Agenda 2020.
Boston’s resolute rejection of the bid (Boston 2024 was the shortest-lived official U.S. Olympic bid in history) came on the precipice of a strangely active moment in IOC news. And given essentially all of the major developments in international Olympic affairs since late July, Massachusetts taxpayers should rest more easily in their decision to stare the IOC in the face and say, simply, “no thanks.”
Featured image via Maksim, CC By SA 1.0
