Budapest 2024 Bid Still Alive

(ATR) The deputy mayor of Budapest tellsAround The Rings that no decision will be made during the city council’s general assembly this week on whether to end the bid to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Alexandra Szalay-Bobrovniczky was speaking at the newly opened Danube Arena in Hungary’s capital, which will host the FINA World Aquatics Championships in July this year.

Tuesday’s event was also supposed to be an occasion to launch the international promotional campaign of Budapest 2024.

However, the bid event was cancelled following the announcement by protest movement ‘NOlimpia’ at the weekend that they had acquired more than 200,000 signatures to trigger a referendum on the subject of hosting the Olympics.

The group behind the movement, Momentum, argue that money earmarked for the Games by the government would be better allocated toward funding health services and education.

The city council is due to discuss the bid situation on Wednesday but when asked by ATR if the bid would be dropped altogether, Szalay-Bobrovniczky said that no decision would be made this week.

"As I know, tomorrow there will not be [any decisions made]," she said before adding: "Tomorrow we will have [bid leader] Balázs Fürjesduring the general assembly and I think we will also have Zsolt Borkai, who is head of the Hungarian Olympic Committee.

"We will have the opportunity to discuss all the questions which we still have or which we now have about the bid. After that, we will see how we can go forward."

She also countered the notion that it was a mistake not to garner more public opinion on whether to bid initially before the candidature phase began, saying they had full support from all sides.

"We didn’t ask them [the people] because we thought we had the unity, which we had. So this will be now the question for the Hungarian Olympic Committee, the municipality of Budapest, and the Hungarian government as well."

Fürjes was also at the Danube Arena alongside mayor of BudapestIstván Tarlós.

In his speech to the assembled guests and local media, Tarlós made reference to the lack of harmony over Budapest’s bid for the Games by highlighting the building around him and saying "look at what we can achieve when we have political unity".

Although there were reports circulating that Budapest were ready to withdraw from the 2024 race this week, leaving Paris and Los Angeles alone to fight it out, Fürjesmaintained that a decision like that would take "a few weeks" to make.

"Timewise, what I can tell you is that it's a few weeks," he said. "I think that it's a matter of a few weeks that we need to be able to restore the unity, the willingness and the support within the country.

"That, itself, is necessary but not enough in itself. Then might come the referendum, but if within two weeks we can't find the solutions, we can't restore the arguments, the consensus then it will be impossible.

"We don't have much time, that's for sure."

Fürjesalso confirmed that due to legalities, a referendum would not be able to take place until May at the earliest.

That could create a possible clash with the planned visit of the IOC Evalution Commission, which is set to be in Budapest from May 10-12.

That is, however, if Budapest is still a candidate by then.

Written and reported by Christian Radnedgein Budapest.

Follow him on Twitter @ChristianRad

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