Boston ends 2024 Olympic bid due to paucity of public support

His statement came hours after Mayor Marty Walsh said he would not sign the bid documents if they left city taxpayers vulnerable to cost overruns.

Boston withdrew as a candidate for the 2024 Olympics on Monday, citing a lack of public support as the US Olympic Committee pondered a replacement bid ahead of a looming deadline. Bids were also discussed on three other occasions but not officially filed.

Boston’s short-lived campaign to bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics ended Monday after months of struggles with local opposition and low public support.

“This is me letting the taxpayers of Boston know where we stand on the Olympic bid”, Walsh told reporters at a mid-morning press conference.

Theres still time to save face if chairman Larry Probst and Blackmun make quick phone calls to leaders in Los Angeles, including Mayor Eric Garcetti and agent/power broker Casey Wasserman. Boston was picked from four finalists including two-time host Los Angeles, Washington and San Francisco.

There will be no Olympics in Boston in 2024.

“I continue to believe that Los Angeles is the ideal Olympic city”, Garcetti said.

Blackmun said the USOC was still open to a US city hosting the games and would explore other possibilities. “This is a monumental decision that cannot be rushed, even if it means not moving forward with our bid for the 2024 Summer Games”.

CHRIS DEMPSEY: People really don’t trust Boston 2024, and they don’t trust the USOC, who are having these closed-door meetings, talking about their plans for the future without truly engaging the public and having this – these ideas come sort of bottom-up rather than top-down.

Next, it may be time to see if there’s more Olympic love in Los Angeles. Boston is not one of those cities. Thanks to a strong working relationship with Mayor Walsh and Governor Baker, as well as the support of business, community and political leaders across Massachusetts, we were able to release Bid 2.0, a fiscally-responsible plan for privately-financed Games that included unprecedented safeguards to manage the risks associated with hosting.

The move to hold the referendum just months before the IOC is expected to pick a host city, likely encouraged the USOC to drop Boston and give it more time to find an alternate candidate, observers said.

The United States has not hosted the Olympics since 1996. “Based on what I saw in the statement, one of their concerns was sort of the robust … debates going on with respect to the Olympics here in Massachusetts and in Boston”.

Scott Blackmun, CEO of the USOC, said the committee still wants to host the 2024 Games.

“Right now we are focused on making the Parapan Am Games a success and the most inclusive, accessible games ever, as we host 3,200 athletes and officials from 28 countries participating in 15 different sporting events”, Coteau said in an e-mail.

That document is the host city contract that has to be signed by government leaders before any city can be chosen as host.