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1 hour ago, Ikarus360 said:

With the current crisis in Europe, and seeing that an european city has resigned from the race using economic issues as a justification, I think the L.A. bid will get much stronger now. I don't mean to say Paris has zero chances, only that now both cities have the same posibilities of winning. 

What does Rome dropping out have to do with Paris?  Why does that change the balance here?

59 minutes ago, Ikarus360 said:

It's obvious the IOC only cares for their money in the end so they will pick the city which gives them more in the end. 

Beijing spent $40 billion on their Olympics.  Sochi spent $50 billion.  How'd that work out for the IOC?  Politics aside, they'll pick the city they believe best furthers their organization.  Which is to say that individual voters will vote for the city that benefits them the most.

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Just now, zekekelso said:

Pretty sure the IOC voters loved both of them. 

Did they love when Sochi's price tag (among other things) scared off several interested bidders that probably would have been better than Beijing or Almaty?  The IOC is not a well-liked organization.  They've survived through some bad times before, but right now, these are bad times for them.  They'll get away with it for 2024 because they have 2 solid cities and you only need 1.  But if they're lacking bidders for 2026 and the only cities/countries offering themselves up are coming from the same authoritarian types of countries, that's bad.

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2 minutes ago, Quaker2001 said:

Remind us.. how many Olympics has the Bay Area hosted?

Oh, come on, Quaker. You know better than that. That has to do more from a lack of a "workable" plan than it has to do with an actual desire to have an Olympics in San Fran.

Even the USOC has come out & said, that if the circumstances were "ideal", than a San Francisco candidature would be their pick. But unfortunately, that workable plan is not there like it is an L.A. at the moment. And remember, L.A. wasn't even the USOC's first 2024 choice, Boston was. So that should tell us something.

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1 minute ago, FYI said:

Oh, come on, Quaker. You know better than that. That has to do more from a lack of a "workable" plan than it has to do with an actual desire to have an Olympics in San Fran.

Even the USOC has come out & said, that if the circumstances were "ideal", than a San Francisco candidature would be their pick. But unfortunately, that workable plan is not there like it is an L.A. at the moment. And remember, L.A. wasn't even the USOC's first 2024 choice, Boston was. So that should tell us something.

And if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.  Tell it to the LA hater who apparently is butthurt that LA and not San Francisco is potentially looking at a 3rd Olympics in the not so distant future.  Even if what Aquatic says about LA being the unattractive fat girl is true, apparently the IOC likes fat girls because I guess they give better head or something.  San Francisco sound "ideal," but if they can't come up with a plan, then the USOC can't put them up and the IOC won't know just how beautiful it is.

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^Aquatic being an "L.A. hater" is beside the point, which has absolutely nothing to do with the 2024 race.

I actually kinda like it, though, cuz Truff & Co need to have their cages rattled since they're "haters" of everything else that isn't "sunshine & rainbows" L.A.

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39 minutes ago, FYI said:

Can't speak much for New York, but how do you know that Chicago didn't come back for "emotional reason", at least partially to that effect. Even when the Rio Games were about to start, there were quite a few articles in the Chicago Tribune about "what could've been & the 'stinging' defeat to Rio de Janiero".

Unlike New Yorkers (that can mainly just brush things aside with a nonchalant attitude), Midwesterners are much more conservative, & take things more at face value. The first-round exit was a blow (at least to the city of Chicago), & was reason enough for them to not even bother with another expensive bid after that kind of megher result.

I'll agree though, that the decision of the USOC not to return for 2020 had more to do with "re-examining" what went wrong than about emotion. And I've said it before & I'll say it again, but had Chicago been in the final round with Rio & still lost but by a smaller margin, the city probably would've been much more receptive to another bid & the USOC most likely would've been onboard. But the unexpected first-round elimination is what really put everything else after that on deep hiatus. 

But with that said, no one is saying that the IOC "will base their decision" on who would be the most "butthurt". But at the same time, the IOC is a calculated sporting organization, & while in the end, the IOC really only cares about themselves, is reason enough that it would likely register in there somewhere VS just being "nonsense".

And I've also read articles from Chicago talking about what a good thing it was that they lost and didn't have to deal with all the headaches that the Olympics bring, even though they probably wouldn't have had to deal with all the socio-economic struggles that Rio did.  Not sure how much I buy into the collective attitudes of New Yorkers versus Chicagoans, although I do agree with the theory that New Yorkers can brush things aside, case in point the bomb that went off in Chelsea last weekend that's probably a bigger deal outside of New York than it is here, especially in the middle of a presidential election cycle.  I agree with you that Chicago's early exit did influence their decision to not return later on.  Maybe they would have returned if they didn't go out so early, but I still don't think that was a decision based on emotion, rather one of reason.

As to your last point.. some people have hinted at that.  I know it's the usual rhetoric around here, but are you seriously trying to tell me that no one has hinted along the lines of "the IOC has to pick Paris because if they don't, they won't be back"?  Sound an awful lot like not wanting to give them a case of butthurtitis.

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11 minutes ago, Quaker2001 said:

Did they love when Sochi's price tag (among other things) scared off several interested bidders that probably would have been better than Beijing or Almaty?  The IOC is not a well-liked organization.  They've survived through some bad times before, but right now, these are bad times for them.  They'll get away with it for 2024 because they have 2 solid cities and you only need 1.  But if they're lacking bidders for 2026 and the only cities/countries offering themselves up are coming from the same authoritarian types of countries, that's bad.

Pretty sure Bach was caught giving Putin blowjobs after the Sochi games, and as for Beijing... the IOC hated them spending $40 billion on the games so much they gave them a WOG despite having no mountains or snow. But, no worries, Beijing will spend whatever it takes to bring high speed rail and snow to their venures. 

You know that the IOC is't well-liked. The IOC voters think they are beloved. And I bet you anything they are expecting bids for 2026 from Canada and the Swiss, so no worries. 

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5 minutes ago, FYI said:

^Aquatic being an "L.A. hater" is beside the point, which has absolutely nothing to do with the 2024 race.

I actually kinda like it, though, cuz Truff & Co need to have their cages rattled since they're "haters" of everything else that isn't "sunshine & rainbows" L.A.

I just want the LA boosters to respond to someone coming in here and saying "LA is the unattractive fat girl."  Because that's a world of difference from those of us (yourself and myself included) who would claim that LA has a lot to offer in terms of an Olympic bid, but we still prefer Paris.  It's not an insult to say a city isn't the number 1 choice to host an Olympics.  Some people take it that way.  That's why I'll always say as a New Yorker that I don't think less of my city versus a Los Angeles, let alone an Atlanta, that my city hasn't hosted an Olympics before.

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22 minutes ago, zekekelso said:

Pretty sure Bach was caught giving Putin blowjobs after the Sochi games, and as for Beijing... the IOC hated them spending $40 billion on the games so much they gave them a WOG despite having no mountains or snow. But, no worries, Beijing will spend whatever it takes to bring high speed rail and snow to their venures. 

You know that the IOC is't well-liked. The IOC voters think they are beloved. And I bet you anything they are expecting bids for 2026 from Canada and the Swiss, so no worries. 

Yea, "gave" them a WOG.  When the alternative was Kazakhstan.  Don't think the IOC is too proud of that outcome.  Yea, they're probably foolish enough to expect a lot of bids.  And maybe they won't get them.  A lot of cities out there are rejecting the IOC and that's a problem if that trend continues.  I know as well as you do that they only need 1 city and the rest of gravy, but I'd be interested to see what happens when they don't get that city.  2022 with its battle between Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich was pretty close

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And just to emphasize the point on how much the IOC doesn't hate huge ticket games like Beijing/Sochi... look at the one year follow-up the IOC games after Sochi. Note that this was written *after* Olso, Stockholm, Lviv and Krakow had dropped out. 

Here's Bach, "“THE OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES, SOCHI 2014, WERE A GREAT SUCCESS. THE RUSSIANS PROVIDED SEAMLESS ORGANISATION,” INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE (IOC) PRESIDENT THOMAS BACH SAID, SPEAKING ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE GAMES. “SOCHI PROMISED EXCELLENT SPORTS VENUES, OUTSTANDING OLYMPIC VILLAGES AND IMPECCABLE ORGANISATION. IT DELIVERED ALL THAT IT PROMISED.

Here's a link to the full report... https://stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/Games_Sochi_2014/Sochi_2014_Facts_and_Figures.pdf

Glowing and gushing over the games... not a caution in site about the cost. Just the IOC bragging about all the great stuff and contributions to the economy. 

Of course, the fun part of the report is the section on "Protecting Clean Athletes".

 The Sochi 2014 Games featured the most stringent anti-doping programme in the history of the Olympic Winter Games.  A record 2,812 tests were conducted, with more emphasis on pre-competition and intelligence-based testing than ever before.  Samples will be kept for 10 years for possible retesting as a result of technological advances or new information about possible doping violations.

Those first two points (should) embarrass the IOC, but that last one is pretty good. 

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2 hours ago, Aquatic said:

Of course. Because L.A. is always willing to be sloppy seconds or the city of "we have nowhere else to go". Which is what L.A. always has been. Has L.A. ever been a first choice for the IOC? Never. L.A. is the fat girl that thinks the high school stud really likes her, but in reality, she's just the one that's always desperate, and lapping at the studs heels, and is willing to put out when the stud has no other options.

If Bach and the IOC continue with business as usual, LA can kiss its Olympic bid goodbye.

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25 minutes ago, Quaker2001 said:

Maybe they would have returned if they didn't go out so early, but I still don't think that was a decision based on emotion, rather one of reason.

Or maybe it was a little of both.

28 minutes ago, Quaker2001 said:

As to your last point.. some people have hinted at that.  I know it's the usual rhetoric around here, but are you seriously trying to tell me that no one has hinted along the lines of "the IOC has to pick Paris because if they don't, they won't be back"?  Sound an awful lot like not wanting to give them a case of butthurtitis.

Ummm, I guess it depends on how one is looking at it. Cuz I think that there's a difference in saying the IOC "has" to pick Paris VS saying if the IOC *doesn't* pick Paris. You might say it's semantics, but those two have very different interpretations depending on the context that it's being argued.

Quite frankly though, it's the L.A. camp (& news outlets) that argue that the IOC 'has' to pick L.A. otherwise they risk "terrorism headlines" for the next seven years, & yada, yada, yada.

42 minutes ago, RuFF said:

Well, not spending that much more right now is hypothetical. We all know where Olympic budgets start.. and where they end. They can all sound like a reasonable cost. For example, Boston planned on hosting a games at a price similar to that of Los Angeles.. and well.. right? You tell me how that story doesn't work. 

Boston is not Paris, & Paris is not Budapest. Paris is much, MUCH closer to L.A. than any of the other cities that you're citing. You're trying to create this "hypothetical gap" between Paris & L.A. that doesn't exist. It's disingenuous at best, or a downright deception at worst.

40 minutes ago, zekekelso said:

Pretty sure Bach was caught giving Putin blowjobs after the Sochi games, 

Was that like an added bonus or something, in addition to the "bags of cash"?

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30 minutes ago, Jesse Saenz said:

Even the most negative articles about the Olympics mention LA 1984 as an exception to the overspending.

Right, an Olympics in 1984 that was at a total cost of only a mere FRACTION of what they cost today, is hardly any gauge of "overspending". The renovations at the coliseum alone would probably cost just as much today. So don't give the illusion that L.A. is some "budget saving" predecessor, bcuz in today's Olympic market, it's not.

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2 minutes ago, FYI said:

Right, an Olympics in 1984 that was at a total cost of only a mere FRACTION of what they cost today, is hardly any gauge of "overspending". The renovations at the coliseum alone would probably cost just as much today. So don't give the illusion that L.A. is some "budget saving" predecessor, bcuz in today's Olympic market, it's not.

1. Renovations to the Coliseum will not be paid for by the 2024 bid, USC is handeling that.

2. Two new stadiums, Rams Stadium in Inglewood and Banc of California Stadium adjacent to the Coliseum are also two giant, expensive projects that are being paid for independent of the bid.

It was said that LA 1984 is a "myth" that on LA believes, when to the contrary, it is very well documented.

 

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^why is it you guys can argue what is, or isn't, associated to the L.A. bid, but when it comes to other cities all the expenses are LUMPED together as "overspending"? Fact is, those other bid cities also have plans in place that aren't directly connected to their respective bid cities, either. So let's keep a balanced view on these things, shall we, instead of generalizing claims to suit your arguments.

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4 minutes ago, RuFF said:

WTF? 

Paris is absolutely much closer to LA. But let's keep it real, it still has to build an athlete's village and a media center. So for as close as Paris is to LA, it might actually be closer to London. And we all know what happened with London's modest budget. 

Ummm, no. That's not true, either. London still had to build MUCH more than Paris did (London regentrified an ENTIRE neighborhood, & that's where most of their budget balloned) & that was back in 2005. Now, 11 years later, Paris would have to build even less. So yeah, still much close to L.A. in that aspect. Talk about cookoo talk. Please get your facts straight next time.

As far as the village, L.A. is using an existing facility cuz it was forced to, not bcuz it wanted to. Even still, Paris building theirs doesn't necessarily mean that it's not in the best interest for their city. The IOC has stated, if it works for your city in the end, then make it part of your plan. If it doesn't, then don't.

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7 minutes ago, RuFF said:

The question posed, however, remains unanswered. If there was a surplus, who is likely to produce it. LA or Paris?

Neither, bcuz a "surplus" on the Olympics in the 21st century is a complete fallacy. That's why even the State of California has provided the bid a $250 million guarantee, has it not. The Olympics are an INVESTMENT for any city, & any concept of it being a "money maker" of some sort for the a city these days is complete "cookoo talk".

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1 hour ago, zekekelso said:

And just to emphasize the point on how much the IOC doesn't hate huge ticket games like Beijing/Sochi... look at the one year follow-up the IOC games after Sochi. Note that this was written *after* Olso, Stockholm, Lviv and Krakow had dropped out. 

Here's Bach, "“THE OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES, SOCHI 2014, WERE A GREAT SUCCESS. THE RUSSIANS PROVIDED SEAMLESS ORGANISATION,” INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE (IOC) PRESIDENT THOMAS BACH SAID, SPEAKING ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE GAMES. “SOCHI PROMISED EXCELLENT SPORTS VENUES, OUTSTANDING OLYMPIC VILLAGES AND IMPECCABLE ORGANISATION. IT DELIVERED ALL THAT IT PROMISED.

Here's a link to the full report... https://stillmed.olympic.org/Documents/Games_Sochi_2014/Sochi_2014_Facts_and_Figures.pdf

Glowing and gushing over the games... not a caution in site about the cost. Just the IOC bragging about all the great stuff and contributions to the economy. 

Once again, look what that has gotten them.  This is the organization that essentially scolded Oslo when they dropped out and left them with Beijing and Almaty.  The IOC can say what they want and try to believe their own hype.  Does anyone outside the IOC buy any of that?

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49 minutes ago, RuFF said:

Yea, I'm not likely to respond. LA has a lot going for it. So does Paris, no question. But I feel in terms of the Olympics specifically LA has a lot going for it. Throw in other things and that may not be the case, but that is just opinion in the end as what you and I think is not going to matter much. And I'm certain that the difference between what you think good about Paris isn't too far about what I think about Los Angeles, and not because of either of us making it up. But because of what both cities already are. Huge opportunities for the movement. We just differ on what we think are valuable attributes. 

All we have here is opinion, but this is why we sometimes take what you have to say with a grain of salt.  Far too often it's "I know Paris has good qualities, but meh, let me tell you more about LA."  No one is trying to deny what LA has, but a little bit of perspective helps.  I know you hate when I bring this up, but I'm going to say it again.. you know as well as I do what we think means nothing.  All that matters is what the IOC voters think.  To that end though, I'm trying to put myself in their mindset and figure out what will be important to them.  And that can easily get confused with what *should* be important to them.  That's the difference between having followed Olympic bidding more closely and having a more rounded view rather than to put LA as the focal point.  It's why 2 people can agree on what LA and Paris are all about and come up with 2 completely different but both very valid opinions on how they see things playing out.  

Again though, this goes to your whole line of thinking of controlling the conversation.. the LA folks have done a very good job of keeping up the positive thoughts about the bid and suppressing most of the negativity that normally surrounds an Olympic bid.  When it's not just them out there though and now they're in a competition against Paris, that's going to be much more difficult.  Saying LA has a lot going for it is not a false statement.  What happens when the Paris folks get to make their case as well?  Most important, how will the IOC view it.

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55 minutes ago, Jesse Saenz said:

1. Renovations to the Coliseum will not be paid for by the 2024 bid, USC is handeling that.

47 minutes ago, RuFF said:

Once again, you can argue the extremes. But having to build no olympic stadium, no athlete's village, and no IBC is a huge advantage for any city. One can say that the costs are not the same but the Olympics all around are not the same. There was no 1.7 billion in 1984. That a 2024 Olympiad in Los Angeles may or may not produce a surplus can be argued until you're blue in the face... but there's no denying that LA has a very unique position in that if anybody is in a position to produce a surplus, it's LA. Over Paris, over Budapest in the simple fact that it doesn't have to build an Athlete's Village. 

Uggh, come on guys, you know better than that.  The official budget includes line items for the Coliseum (USC may be paying for the renovations, but that doesn't include the temporary overlay needed for track & field for the Olympics), the broadcast center, and the athletes village.  It's not like these venues are ready to go as is with a few bucks thrown in for a fresh coat of paint and a couple of bedspreads.

More than that.. this is still the IOC we're talking about.  Are we sure they're going to pick the bid that doesn't have to build something over the one that is going to build something brand new and leave a legacy for the city?  Again, think about what the IOC is actually going to decide, not what they should decide because it seems like the smarter, more sustainable choice.

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