(ATR) The Italian bid tells Around the Rings a decision will be made Oct. 11 on whether it can continue, following advice from Thomas Bach.
The IOC president discussed the bid’s plight with Italian Olympic Committee president Giovanni Malago at dinner last night.
While all four 2024 candidate cities are due to submit their second bid dossiers to the IOC on Friday, Bach agreed with Malago that the announcement can come on Tuesday.
Around the Rings understands that Rome 2024 and CONI are keen to avoid upsetting Pope Francis by postponing a formal announcement that is expected to signal the death knell of the Eternal City’s second consecutive Olympic bid. It would have overshadowed the inaugural conference on faith and sport at the Vatican. Bach is among the guest speakers at the three-day event.
A Rome 2024 source said the bid announcement could wait "to be fully respectful towards the big event the Vatican is hosting".
Mayor Virginia Raggi’s decision not to throw her support behind Rome 2024, endorsed by the city council last week, has effectively killed the bid. But a formal announcement has been slow in coming, with any intervention from Bach now unlikely to rescue the Olympic mission.
The IOC shared little from Bach’s discussions with Malago. ATR understands the pair will hold further talks about the bid on the sidelines of the Vatican conference.
An IOC spokesman told ATR that questions surrounding the demise of the bid "are hypothetical".
"The IOC will not comment until further decisions of CONI and the candidature committee have been taken," he said.
ATR asked the IOC if Rome 2024 could be squandering $50,000, the fee to accompany its second bid book – covering governance, legal and venue funding – due Oct. 7, knowing it highly likely the Olympic bid will be abandoned.
However, ATR has learned that this payment, the so-called ‘installment 2’ of the Candidature Service Fee, was paid in July more than a month before Raggi dropped the axe on the bid.
Budapest, Los Angeles and Paris are the other contenders for the 2024 Olympics. The IOC votes on the host city in Peru next September.
Reported by Mark Bisson
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