Houston was the first of five cities The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) visited Monday on its “fact-finding” trip that includes Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco before it decides whether it will bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.
USOC chairman Peter Ueberroth said the group is on a “fact-finding” trip. “We don’t know if we’re going to bid for 2016, but we did decide that we wanted to have dialogue with five cities – exceptional cities – cities that have a good heritage with Olympians”.
The four-member USOC contingent met for two hours with Houston Mayor Bill White and other city representatives.
Ueberroth said, “this was just direct discussion… A lot has happened since the last time you considered any of this. You’ve got new facilities, lots of new facilities, so we have to get up to date, and we tried to bring your group up to date. We discussed the gamut from transportation, to labour, to polling – lots of things. We had a free, independent discussion”.
Following problems with New York’s failed 2012 bid USOC officials think a streamlined process will help any American candidate, reports the Associated Press.
Ueberroth said, “it’s too costly for cities. You had winners and losers and it didn’t make any sense in my view”.
AP reports that in a change in previous bid procedures the USOC will not charge a fee to bid cities, but if a city is chosen as the U.S. representative, USOC officials said it should be financed privately. Ueberroth said, “we don’t want taxpayers’ money used to fund a bid for the Games. If there are some facilities built for the Olympics and used for 50 years after, that’s a different matter. But the Olympic bid process should be done privately”.
George DeMontrond III, chair of the disbanded Houston 2012 Foundation, said there were no surprises in the discussion. He said the USOC indicated there may be an interim cut in the five-city list, with two or more cities asked to provide additional information.
He added, “they’re talking about going forward to March 31 (of next year) so they’ll have to let us get out of the starting gate soon if they want us to go forward”.
