IOC Applauds 2024 Olympic Bids After Key Meetings

(ATR) Christophe Dubi tells Around the Rings the bidding cities have "robust" plans and the revamped bidding process is working well.

The Olympic Games executive director said evidence of the preparedness of the five contenders was on display at the IOC’s bidding workshop in Lausanne. Budapest, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Rome and Paris sent 10-person delegations to take part in meetings last week.

"For us it’s very good that the new concept and the competitive dialogue is working. It seems to be the right direction. We have a lot of interaction," he told ATR.

Dubi said the invitation phase that led to the naming of five candidate cities in September had given the cities a head start. "They heard a lot of messages during those days, it has helped them to build where they are now," he said.

"Am I impressed? Very much so and it’s very pleasing."

Asked if there were any weak areas pinpointed by the IOC in any of the bids, "The answer is a straight ‘no’".

Each of the cities spent a day-and-a-half with the IOC and IPC, showcasing their plans and receiving advice from IOC executives and experts.

Dubi remarked on how advanced the candidate cities were in outlining their vision for the 2024 Games, including the location of various venues backed by guarantees from IFs that indicated they were feasible.

Digging into their concepts, he noted that they were thinking smartly about usage of existing venues, ideas for temporary venues and how to use iconic locations in cities.

"It ticks all boxes and those were all messages delivered in the aftermath of London and also in the context of Agenda 2020 explanations," Dubi said.

"No one [from the IOC] is saying ‘there we have a point that will be complicated’," he added.

The bidding workshop partly focused on deliverables for the first stage ‘Vision, Games Concept and Strategy’. They must answer detailed questionnaires on these themes and submit to the IOC by Feb. 17.

Dubi said they are not bid books. "We don’t want that they spend time and effort with editing a publication," he emphasized of the IOC’s cost-cutting drive in the new-look bidding process.

The IOC Evaluation Commission will provide a so-called ‘dashboard report’ to the Executive Board which will decide which cities should proceed to the next phase. The IOC has no plans to shortlist cities. Unless a city falls dramatically short of requirements, the committee hopes they will all make it to the IOC vote in September 2017.

Speaking about the dashboard report – a new innovation for this bidding process – Dubi explained: "The main task for the executive board will be to take stock of each city, where they stand and whether they are meeting all the requirements to go ahead. This will be a dashboard report, simply to provide a high-level overview of each case to the EB."

The evaluation commission will provide the first dashboard report in the weeks after the February submissions, with the IOC EB reviewing the bids at its April meeting.

Dubi said his Olympic Games department officials would then sit down with each of cities and analyze with them the dashboard report, "If there are any points to be improved, they will have the feedback and that allows them to progress on more solid ground."

"That is the whole purpose of having interim reports, building to what will be the final submission."

Following requests from the five bidding cities, the IOC is set to add another workshop to the bid process.

It will focus on non-competition venues, media facilities and Olympic Villages and is expected to be held before Rio 2016.

Written by Mark Bisson

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