Revised Boston 2024 Bid Comes Up Short -- Media Watch

(ATR)Boston 2024 leaders unveiled a revised bid plan for the Summer Olympics on June 29.

The organizing committee says their latest bid plan will allow a privately funded Olympics to operate at a surplus budget in an effort to revive public opinion.

Bid leader Steve Pagliuca detailed the budget analysis at the Boston Convention Exhibition Center, potential host for boxing, volleyball and table tennis for Boston 2024.

"But some vital information was missing," New York Times reporter Katharine Seelye says.

"The specifics of an insurance policy, to protect the city from cost overruns, were not included.

"The group has set aside $128 million for insurance, but it did not identify any companies willing to insure the city against overruns."

Alan Abrahamson, founder of 3 Wire Sports, says, "the Boston bid — as the pronounced absence of the mayor at Monday's event emphatically underscores — faces political problems galore."

He says Boston 2024 leaders should take a lesson from Barcelona organizers.

"The 1992 Games showed mayors, governors, prime ministers and presidents that the Olympics could serve as a catalyst for an urban makeover on a grand scale.

"Barcelona was a middling city on the Mediterranean before 1992. Now it is one of the world’s most desirable tourist destinations.

"Since 1992, Olympic bid cities have used Barcelona as a model for hugely expansive urban makeovers."

With the bid's fate on the line, Boston Globe writer Mark Arsenault says, the new plan is also a "shift in messaging for Boston 2024, repositioning the Olympics less as the ultimate goal of the planning effort and more of a waypoint along a sweeping 18-year economic development project."

He adds, "The new plan's more than 200 pages of data and glitzy renderings are also an attempt by Boston 2024 to counter attacks about the risks of the Games with a more tangible sense of the possible benefits."

A former U.S. Treasury official tellsBoston Herald'sJack Encarnacao that the"lofty plan to deliver the 'most insured Games ever' with Boston 2024 promising to carry $128 million in premiums won't necessarily protect taxpayers from cost overruns.

Patricia McCoy, now a professor at Boston College, adds, "In recent history, most Olympics involved overruns.

"Insurance does not cover that, period. It simply does not cover that."

Even Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker is not entirely sold on the so-called "Boston 2.0" bid plan.

"The way it's presented, it's a lot of very small lines with very big numbers on it," Baker told the Boston Herald on Monday.

"We want to get into the details of what they are specifically talking about."

Baker did say he was pleased with Boston 2024's transparency. "[This plan] is a worthy attempt to answer many of the questions people have had over the past few months, and I commend them on that.

"But we still have some work to do in regards to what the expectation would be with regard to infrastructure development overall."

Brian Steele, writer for MassLive.com, features an editorial round-up of coverage surrounding the newly revealed Boston 2024 bid plan.

The mixed reviews, Steele says, deem the new plan "one very expensive leap of faith."

Boston.com columnist Eric Wilbur says Boston 2024's "Bid 2.0" is already and Olympic failure.

"Yikes," Wilbur says."On a day when Boston 2024 figured to finally present a plan decent enough to satisfy the USOC before Tuesday's board of directors meeting in California, the organizers fell flat on their collective faces Monday morning at the Boston Exhibition and Convention Center, delivering a paucity of answers to the taxpayers of the Commonwealth in the wake of their showy demonstration that might as well have been given directly in a tiny boardroom in Colorado Springs."

Evan Horowitz, a writer for the Boston Globe, explores what happens when "things go wrong with the Olympics."

He also addresses the potential risk for taxpayers, which he says the revised bid does not address, and Boston 2024's proposed insurance policy for the Games. "And while the Olympic planners are hoping to take out an insurance policy against unforeseen costs, it’s not clear whether that approach is really feasible.

"If not, any shortfalls will have to be made up with money from city and state coffers."

HBO Takes on Olympic Documentary

The U.S. TV network HBO will feature an intimate documentary on four-time Olympic gold medalist Greg Louganis in August.

The documentary, titled "Back on Board: Greg Louganis,"looks at the "public triumphs and private struggles of this LGBT trailblazer," HBO said in a statement.

Directed byCheryl Furjanic, the film willtrace the now 55-year-old's story from a "difficult childhood, through his Olympic conquests, to a transformative post-Olympic life, outlining the discrimination and other obstacles he has faced throughout his remarkable journey."

HBO will air documentary on Aug 4. at 10 p.m. EST.

Compiled byNicole Bennett

Home page photo: Boston 2024

For general comments or questions,click here.

20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics isAroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.