Declining hosts a test for Olympics

The simultaneous awarding of the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympic Games to Paris and Los Angeles was met with cheers in the respective host countries. Indeed, both cities should be commended for pursuing Olympic bids in a cooperative manner. But the surface-level rosiness of the reaction to Monday's announcement belies the serious challenges ahead for the Olympic movement.

The dual-award announcement was preceded by a bidding process for the 2024 Games that was full of stumbling blocks from the outset. A slew of cities aspiring to host the 2024 Games dropped their bids early on, including three European cities (Budapest, Rome, and Hamburg) and one US city (Boston). This left only Paris and Los Angeles in the running. The story was similar prior to the awarding of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, with only two cities in contention by the time the International Olympic Committee met to declare Beijing the host over Almaty.

The simultaneous awarding of the 2024 and 2028 Games was less a stroke of genius on the part of the IOC than it was a fait accompli. The IOC almost certainly anticipated that only some cities would be falling over themselves to host the 2028 Olympics, so it decided to kill two birds with one stone.