Anti-US mood could torpedo LA Games bid
A bid by Los Angeles to host the 2024 Summer Olympics could fall victim to anti-American sentiment brewing inside the International Olympic Committee, sources inside the IOC said on the weekend.
The bid, which is competing against three European cities, risks a negative protest vote by several IOC members angry over the prominent role the US has taken in pursuing doping allegations against Russian athletes, the sources said.
The IOC will decide on bids from Los Angeles, Paris, Rome and Budapest in September next year.
At least three non-Russian IOC members, speaking on condition of anonymity, said US’s intervention into allegations of systematic Russian doping had marred the run-up to the Rio Games and tarnished the IOC brand.
“Of course the Los Angeles bid will face some consequences from this ,” an IO C member said.
The US Department of Justice is probing allegations of Russian doping on US soil, and the US anti-doping agency called for a total ban on Russians in Rio even as US athletes with a history of positive drugs tests competed.
None of the IOC’s 98 members gave an estimate of how many are thinking along the same lines. Elections for host cities can be decided by a handful of votes and be heavily influenced by politics.
Of course the Los Angeles bid will face some consequences from this.” IOC member
The head of the LA 2024 bid team, Casey Wasserman, said it would not make sense for IOC members to vote against Los Angeles on the basis of investigations totally unrelated to its bid.
“Doping agencies in America are independent; they are not under the control of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), they are certainly not under the control of a private independent bid, which is what we are,” Wasserman said.
“We are independent of USOC and of the city of Los Angeles, we are private and to somehow use that against us seems misguided.”
An IOC member said a separate US Department of Justice investigation into corruption at world soccer’s governing body, FIFA, also rankled some committee members.
Several senior FIFA officials were arrested last year at a five star hotel in Z uric handheld in prison pending extradition to the US over corruption and embezzlement charges.
IOC member Issa Hayatou of Cameroon is FIFA’s senior vice-president, while Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad al Sabah of Kuwait, who is in charge of the IOC’s central fund, the Olympic Solidarity, is a member of the FIFA council.
Neither of the two members, who declined to comment, has been named in relation to investigation soft he F IF A cases.
A Canadian lawyer’s investigation into what he called “systematic” Russian doping led to the world athletics federation banning the country’s track and field team, with the exception of just one athlete, from the Rio Games.
USADA had formed a coalition of anti-doping bodies calling for a blanket ban on all Russian competitors at the Games, but the IOC eventually cleared more than 270 Russians to compete.