BOSTON (AP) – The planned Olympic sailing venue relocated from Boston Harbour to the working class former whaling capital of New Bedford.
Tennis dropped out of Harvard and moved to the inner city.
Boston 2024 organisers are trying to revive their struggling Olympic bid by sprinkling proposed venues to more distant – and more diverse – communities, partially sacrificing their original vision of a compact, walkable games in the hope that spreading the potential benefits will get them to the finish line.
“We listened,” Boston 2024 CEO Rich Davey said on Thursday after announcing that the tennis venue originally slated for the Harvard University athletic fields is now planned for the neighbourhood of Dorchester at the nation’s first African-American tennis club.
“I don’t think we need to sell the magic of the Olympics – although we want to talk about it,” he said. “People want to see a big vision, but they also want to see a ‘what’s in it for them’, and for their communities.”
Ever since the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), in a secretive process with a surprising result, chose Boston as the American nominee to bid for the 2024 Summer Games, the effort has struggled to find support locally. A recent poll by WBUR showed 39 per cent of the state’s residents supported hosting the games, with 49 per cent against, though the numbers are essentially flipped if the events are spread across the state.
The International Olympic Committee is scheduled to pick a host for the 2024 Summer Games in 2017, with Boston expected to compete against Hamburg, Germany, and Budapest, Hungary, as well as Rome and Paris.
But there are doubts whether Boston will even make it to this September, when the USOC must decide whether to stick with the Athens of America as its bid city, ditch it for the safer bet of Los Angeles or just sit this one out entirely.
Boston 2024 organisers have scheduled a series of venue announcements this month to talk about the how an Olympics would benefit local communities. And the communities aren’t the same as the original plans.
“We just didn’t get it right the first time,” said Davey, who called the new series of announcements ‘Bid 2.0’.And just because it’s ‘Bid 2.0’ doesn’t mean it’s ‘Bid Last.0’,” he said.