(ATR) Pierre Beckers says ongoing talks with LA 2028 organizers can help eliminate the costly mistakes made in the organization of past Olympics.
The chair of the IOC’s coordination commission for Paris 2024 revealed to reporters in PyeongChang that the first official joint meeting with Los Angeles 2028 leaders will take place in the spring. His IOC counterpart Patrick Baumann, who is overseeing the U.S. city’s Games preparations, and Olympic Games executive director Christophe Dubi will be among others participating. The date is not yet confirmed.
"We really want to explore concretely what we can do together. I think it will be important not only as a public relations signal but really as a way to show that the Olympic Movement can get together to be more efficient and do more things at the same cost and to reduce costs where possible," Beckers told Around the Rings editor Ed Hula in PyeongChang.
Beckers said it would be the first of many such summits between leaders of the Olympic host cities.
"I think it will be fantastic because, let’s be honest, in the past and until today organising committees have a strong interest to spend a day or half a day with other organising cities but usually it stops there.
"One of my surprises in the past has been to see how many mistakes are sometimes being repeated in spite of the examples that everybody has in front of them. Four years later it seems like the next organizing committee faces the same issues with transport, with media, with construction of the Olympic Village, on the social front… I think that is just such as waste of efficiency.
"I hope that with Los Angeles we can do things... and if it succeeds it can be repeated in the future," he added.
The president of the Belgian NOC, appointed as 2024 coordination commission chair in October, will draw on his experience of working for two other IOC commissions – he chairs the audit committee and is a member of the finance commission.
On the Paris 2024 budget, Beckers vowed to start from scratch.
"I think we need to start from a blank page of paper and decide for Paris based on Agenda 2020 and the new 100 decisions [reforms package] that we approved yesterday," he said.
"We need to decide what is right for Paris instead of simply comparing to what has been achieved before."
He said living in Brussels would be advantageous to the role of supervising the French capital’s Games preparations.
"I think it will help tremendously," he said, referring to 2018 coordination commission chair Gunilla Lindberg’s 39 visits to PyeongChang since the Korean host was awarded the Games.
"These had to be 39 exhausting trips. We are between Brussels and Paris – an hour and 20 minutes distance from each other. So it’s going to be very easy and I think it will allow me to make myself available for even a one-hour meeting, if it’s an important one," he said.
Belgium’s close cultural and historical ties with France would also aid his work on the Paris 2024 project.
"It will help me in particular to be not only available as a support but also to be present to coach and guide and sometimes to put Paris on the right tracks," he added.
Reported by Ed Hula in PyeongChang and Mark Bisson
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