If Paris wins the bid for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, football matches will be played in eight different cities across France.
Friday the Paris 2024 bid committee announced its pre-selection of nine cities that could see Olympic football. They include Paris, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Nice, Sant-Etienne and Toulouse. If Paris wins the bid a short list would drop to eight cities, including Paris’ Parc des Princes stadium which has been given the nod to host both men’s and women’s finals.
Spreading the event across several existing sites corresponds well with International Olympic Committee (IOC) Agenda 2020 sustainability and legacy reforms.
Fifty-eight matches will be played in the men’s and women’s tournaments.
Meanwhile Cagliari on the Italian island of Sardinia has been chosen over short listed candidate Bari as the proposed sailing venue should Rome host the 2024 Games.
Saturday the organizing committee released a statement saying that Cagliari was chosen because it “offered the best weather marine conditions with better intensity of wind and greater regularity. Other aspects such as the environmental situation of the city on a human scale, the travel time, the Olympic village and the international popularity as a city of sailing, had a positive influence on the decision”.
The selection process began in October with 17 candidates but on November 25 Rome 2024 pared the list down to two after evaluating the sites based on weather conditions, the environment, infrastructure and logistics.
The final two were compared to proposed sailing venues of bid rivals including Budapest’s Kiel site, Marseille proposed by Paris and Long Beach in Los Angeles.
Cagliari is 412 Km (256 miles) away from Rome. The Sardinian capital is in the south of the island.
The International Sailing Federation will need to give final approval for the venue.
The International Olympic Committee will elect a host city in September 2017.
