ATR First: 2024 Olympic Talks to Start with LA and Paris

(ATR) IOC vice president John Coates tells Around the Rings "there won’t be a loser" for the 2024 and 2028 Olympics.

President Thomas Bach welcomed the LA and Paris bid delegations to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne on Monday, paying tribute to their bidding concepts and vision.

On Wednesday, the IOC Extraordinary Session will debate and vote on a proposal to double award the 2024 and 2028 Games at the Session in Lima on Sept. 13. Yet to be determined is which city will get what; both have their sights trained on securing the 2024 prize.

Coates, talking exclusively to ATR, says both LA and Paris will benefit – but a deal must be struck for the two Games in the coming weeks.

"If we do this properly tomorrow, and if then we reach an agreement… there won’t be a loser," Coates said.

"After we get through tomorrow that agrees to the simultaneous election then we have to have a tripartite agreement between the IOC and the two cities."

The Australian IOC member, a close confidante of Bach, suggested talks would gain pace about the distribution of the two Olympics.

"You have to after that get one of those cities to put their hand up and say ‘we would really like to go for 2028’," he said.

Coates ruled out any agreement coming this week, or too soon.

"The cities also have to be given time to look at the host city contract for 2028 and provide some guarantees," Coates told ATR, adding that an IOC Evaluation Commission would be appointed.

The IOC’s ruling body concluded a two-day meeting Monday, with a rumor circulating that incentives linked to the awarding of the 2028 Games had been discussed.

Coates declined to comment, saying only that "It has to be a discussion to do with the host city contract for 2028 including with the national Olympic committee."

Rogge Commends Double Award

Speaking to ATR at the Olympic Museum, former IOC president Jacques Rogge praised the IOC initiative for a double allocation of Olympics in Lima.

"I think Thomas Bach had a very good idea in trying to retain and to honor the two candidate cities," he said.

Rogge said it was a change of rules "that is for the better, both for the cities, the IOC and the Olympic Movement."

Asked if 2024 was the right time for the Olympics to return to Paris, which would mark the centenary of the last Games there, Rogge refused to be drawn.

He denied that the IOC’s Olympic bidding model was in crisis, following a series of withdrawals from the 2022 Winter Olympic race and the 2024 contest, some due to political backlashes to the cost of the Games.

"Crisis is maybe too strong a word. There is a change in behavior of the populations in the cities that are interested in bidding," he said. "Before that you did not have these protests. The difficulty is the protests are not against the IOC as such, they are against other questions."

Commenting on the future of Olympic bidding, he said: "The IOC is engaged in a bilateral relationship with cities and that’s the way we should continue to do."

Reported by Mark Bissonin Lausanne.

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