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While D.C. is making plans to shut down a lot of busy roads for tomorrow’s March on Washington anniversary rally, plans to host another huge event that will cause major headaches for commuters and generally everyone in the city is underway.
As the Associated Press reports, DC 2024—an nonprofit group— has been formed in order to make the bid for the D.C. region to host the 2024 Olympic Summer Games. Announced in a press release earlier today, DC 2024 President Bob Sweeney said that, among other reasons, D.C. would be the best place to host the Olympics because of its reputation for heightened security.
“We are the safest and most secure city in the world,” said Bob Sweeney, president of DC 2024. “The largest expense of any Olympic Games is security, and the fact that we’ve got it pretty built in to our everyday life here in Washington, we would leverage that asset tremendously to put on this high-profile event.”
If D.C. were to win the bid, it would be the first American city to host the Summer Olympic Games since Atlanta did in 1996. Let’s not forget how that went. Although an exploratory committee has been formed, it’s still a long way before D.C. could even be considered as a serious candidate.
Washington was one of 35 U.S. cities to receive a letter from the U.S. Olympic Committee to gauge interest, and Sweeney expects about 10 to step forward as serious candidates. The USOC hasn’t even decided for certain that it wants to bid for the 2024 Games, which will be awarded by the International Olympic Committee in 2017.
And of course, this isn’t the first time D.C. has made a bid to host the Olympic Summer Games. Sweeney said that he hopes to “raise $3 million to $5 million to support the D.C. bid by the end of 2014,” which is merely a fraction of what cost to host the Olympics ($3.5 billion to $6 billion).
Anyways, before we all get in a big huff and everyone starts freaking out about D.C. hosting the Summer Olympics, we’ve got plenty of time to sort things out. The USOC won’t make a decision—if it makes one at all—until 2015, and then the International Olympic Committee won’t make their decision until 2017. Let’s all keep the panicking at bay for at least a few more years.
