A special International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board meeting is due to be held on June 9 to accelerate plans to jointly award the 2024 and 2028 Games this year.
It seems virtually certain that they are seeking to press ahead with plans to award both Los Angeles and Paris editions of the Games.
Exactly how this will be done appears the main question.
The Executive Board will “receive and discuss two reports from the Working Group currently looking into the candidature procedure.”
They will also discuss the candidature process for the 2026 Winter Olympic Games.
The panel is chaired by the four IOC vice-presidents: Australia’s John Coates, Turkey’s Uğur Erdener, China’s Yu Zaiqing and Spain’s Juan Antonio Samaranch.
But President Thomas Bach, who will chair the one-day meeting at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, is still considered instrumental in devising and formulating the idea.
Key questions to discuss involve whether IOC members will still get to vote for their preferred choice for each event or whether the IOC will seek to make decisions via three-party talks with representatives from Los Angeles and Paris.
IOC members are still keen to exercise their right to hold a legitimate vote.
But, on the other hand, Bach is likely to want to exercise a tight grip on proceedings to ensure what he sees as the most favorable outcome.
It is likely that the Executive Board will draw-up proposals which will be presented to the wider membership at a Candidate City Briefing in Lausanne on July 11 and 12.
A vote of some description is then still expected to take place at the IOC Session in Lima on September 13.
The process for the 2026 Winter Olympics, meanwhile, is not expected to officially begin until after next year’s Games in Pyeongchang.
Calgary in Canada, Innsbruck in Austria and Sion in Switzerland are all potential contenders.
Kazakh city Almaty, Erzurum in Turkey and Sapporo in Japan are other places to have been linked with possible bids.
By Nick Butler
Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz.