It’s time for mobilization in Boston. On Tuesday, March 31, the bid team held a public meeting at Harvard University. Announced objective: to convince the local population of the opportunity for the capital of Massachusetts to appear at the 2024 Summer Games, then to win the pompom. Above all, it is urgent for the leaders of the American project to turn around public opinion now mainly opposed to the Olympic ambition of the metropolis. According to the most recent poll, carried out last month for WBUR radio, only 36% of those questioned said they were in favor. They were still 51% last January, when Boston was designated by the American Olympic Committee (USOC). Another public meeting is planned for April 28. Their number could increase in the coming months.
Worrying? The American press believes it. THE Wall Street Journal announced at the start of the week that the application could simply be abandoned in the event that a referendum, scheduled for autumn 2016, proves unfavorable to the project. News that the USOC was quick to deny with an official press release. But Associated Press pushed the investigation to the point of probing the members of the IOC. Steve Wilson, the American agency's Olympic issues specialist, questioned a handful of them about their feelings about the uncertainty surrounding the Boston 2024 file.
Unsurprisingly, Anita DeFrantz dismisses doubts about the future of the project with a wave of her hand. The vice-president of the International Rowing Federation (FISA), member of the IOC Executive Board, is American. She fully supports the candidacy. “The USOC has made a decision and now we have to move forward,” she said. There will be a referendum. It is very good. People will have plenty of time to find out the facts. »
Denis Oswald, the former president of FISA, a historic member of the IOC, is more doubtful. “The USOC must certainly have had some indication of popular support in the various American cities in the running, I am surprised that it did not take this into account more,” suggests the Swiss leader. Denis Oswald also makes no secret of his incomprehension regarding the idea put forward by Boston 2024 of organizing a referendum in November 2016, several months after the meeting of the IOC Executive Board supposed to establish a short list of candidate cities. . “Why wait so long,” he asks. I don't understand. The uncertainty that will hover over the project, whatever the final result of the referendum, will not be good for the candidacy. »
Same story with Dick Pound, another “historian” of the Olympic movement, member of the IOC and former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency. Asked by AP, the Canadian considers that submitting the future of the candidacy to a referendum constitutes a “risk”. “It means moving forward, making a whole bunch of plans and incurring expenses, without being sure that there won't be someone who will suddenly stop everything,” he says. A scenario that is all the more uncertain as it will no longer be possible for the USOC, in the event of the population's refusal to support the Boston project, to turn to another American city.
Announced very early as favorites for an Olympic race in which we still do not know all the competitors, the Americans believed they had made a successful start. Today, they doubt it. And the IOC with them.
