Paris and LA may both get IOC nod for hosting Olympics

LAUSANNE: International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach does not like losers and that is why Paris and Los Angeles could this year both win the right to host the world’s biggest and most complicated sporting event.

The French and United States mega cities are currently locked in battle to stage the 2024 Olympics, along with outsider Budapest.

There is mounting speculation, however, that an IOC meeting in September could give one of the frontrunners the 2024 Games and at the same time award 2028 to the other.

The double gold medal event could take some twiddling of the Olympic machinery, but Bach said in December: “We have to take into consideration that the procedure as it is now produces too many losers.”

The IOC are worried that if Paris or Los Angeles miss out on 2024, they may give up on hosting at all. And in times of economic uncertainty, the IOC cannot afford to lose such quality candidates.

“You can be happy about a strong field in quantity for one day but you start to regret it the next day because then the procedure starts to produce losers and it is not the purpose of an Olympic candidature procedure to produce losers,” Bach said to support his call for change.

The IOC are refusing to say whether reform will be ready for the Sept 13 vote in Lima.

“We are staying with the 2024 process, we are very clear about that,” Christophe Dubi, the IOC executive director for the Olympics said.

Paris and Los Angeles have both said they are only interested in 2024.

However, Casey Wasserman, chairman of the Los Angeles 2024 bid committee, said last month that the idea of awarding two Games at the same time was “an interesting concept”.

Sources close to the IOC say a double vote has many advantages.