Poll finds support high for 2024 Olympic bid

61 per cent of Torontonians in favour of going for the Games

More than six in 10 Torontonians want their city to bid to host the 2024 summer Olympic Games, a new poll says.

Forum Research asked 755 residents on Sunday, as the successful Pan Am Games wrapped up, “Do you support or oppose Toronto making a bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games?”

Some 61per cent said they support a bid. Thirty per cent were opposed and 9 per cent said they didn’t know.

“There’s a warm halo emanating from the Pan Am Games right now and it would appear citizens no longer fear the potential congestion and cost of an Olympics,” Forum president Lorne Bozinoff said in an interview Monday.

The margin of error for the interactive voice-response telephone survey is plus or minus 4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Data is sometimes statistically weighted by age, region and other variables to reflect the actual population according to census data.

Bozinoff noted that Olympic bid support is consistent across Toronto, unlike other issues, which reveal an urban-suburban divide.

Younger Torontonians may be recalling the successful 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Support is lowest among older Torontonians and those who say they voted Progressive Conservative in the last provincial election.

Forum also wanted to see if city councillors should be wary of backing an Olympic bid.

BOSTON— Boston’s bid to host the 2024 Olympics is over.

The U.S. Olympic Committee and the city severed ties after a teleconference Monday, throwing the U.S. bid process into flux as any city must be officially nominated within seven weeks.

USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun said the federation wants to stay in the race. If so, Los Angeles would be the likely choice.

The bid leaders felt Boston could deliver a great Olympics, said Blackmun. “They also recognize, however, that we are out of time if the USOC is going to be able to consider a bid from another city. As a result, we have reached a mutual agreement to withdraw Boston’s bid.”

Boston 2024 chair Steve Pagliuca portrayed the move as a joint decision made “to give the Olympic movement in the United States the best chance to bring the Games back to our country in 2024.”

The Boston bid soured within days of its birth in January, beset by poor communication and an active opposition group that kept public support low. It also failed to get crucial political support.

Earlier Monday, Boston Mayor Martin Walsh announced he would not be pres- sured into signing the host city contract, which puts the city on the hook for any cost overruns. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker has also been unwilling to pledge support, waiting instead to see a full report from consultants that’s scheduled to be complete until next month.

Leaders of the No Boston Olympics group were planning a celebration at a Boston pub later Monday.

“We need to move forward as a city, and today’s decision allows us to do that on our own terms, not the terms of the USOC or the IOC,” their statement said. “We’re better off for having passed on Boston 2024.”

Tank Taxes for Olympics, a group pushing for a referendum on the Olympics in Boston, put out a release applauding the news: “We are a world-class state without the Olympics. We don’t need to spend billions of tax dollars to prove that fact.”

The United States hasn’t hosted a Summer Olympics since Atlanta in 1996, or any Olympics since the Salt Lake City in 2002. That timing made this look like a race that was America’s to lose, even against world-class cities such as Rome and Paris.

But the USOC also showed its uncanny knack for shooting itself in the foot, no matter who’s in charge.