(ATR) As the Paris Council backs a 2024 bid, Thomas Bach prepares to hold discussions with Francois Hollande about the city’s Olympic quest later this week.
The city council on Monday approved a resolution to support a Paris bid, a decision which was widely expected.
Considered the last major hurdle on the city's road to officially announce its 2024 candidacy, it lays a platform for Bach’s meeting with Hollande at IOC headquarters in Lausanne on Thursday.
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo is now firmly behind a 2024 bid. IOC member from France Tony Estanguet was present at the council meeting today, the French NOC tells Around the Rings.
The French NOC told ATR that the council’s support was one step among many en route to a final decision on a Paris bid due in late May or early June.
It will be Bach’s third meeting with Hollande after recent talks in Paris and at the Summit de Francophonie in Dakar, Senegal last November. They will continue discussions on "issues of mutual interest" and also on a potential Paris bid, the IOC tells ATR.
Hollande has publicly supported a Paris 2024 bid on several occasions. He will be seeking some advice from Bach about how best the city should proceed in preparing its Games concept.
"The state has a powerful opinion. The president and prime minister should also support the bid, so yes it’s an important meeting," a French NOC spokeswoman told ATR.
IOC President at UN
Bach has a punishing travel schedule this week.
He heads to New York on Tuesday for a meeting with UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and to deliver a speech on sustainable development and sport at UN headquarters.
Bach returns to Lausanne in time for a busy round of meetings on Thursday.
As well as his meeting with Hollande, Bach is scheduled to sit down with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban to discuss the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
With Budapest mulling a bid for the 2024 Games, the issue will likely come up in discussions.
Reported by Mark Bisson
20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.
Recent Articles
Sinner-Alcaraz, the duel that came to succeed the three phenomenons
Beyond the final result, Roland Garros left the feeling that the Italian and the Spaniard will shape the great duel that came to help us through the duel for the end of the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic era.
Table tennis: Brazil’s Bruna Costa Alexandre will be Olympic and Paralympic in Paris 2024
She is the third in her sport and the seventh athlete to achieve it in the same edition; in Santiago 2023 she was the first athlete with disabilities to compete at the Pan American level and won a medal.
Rugby 7s: the best player of 2023 would only play the medal match in Paris
Argentinian Rodrigo Isgró received a five-game suspension for an indiscipline in the circuit’s decisive clash that would exclude him until the final or the bronze match; the Federation will seek to make the appeal successful.
Rhonex Kipruto, owner of the world record for the 10000 meters on the road, was suspended for six years
The Kenyan received the maximum sanction for irregularities in his biological passport and the Court considered that he was part of a system of “deliberate and sophisticated doping” to improve his performance. He will lose his record and the bronze medal at the Doha World Cup.
Katie Ledecky spoke about doping Chinese swimmers: “It’s difficult to go to Paris knowing that we’re going to compete with some of these athletes”
The American, a seven-time Olympic champion, referred to the case of the 23 positive controls before the Tokyo Games that were announced a few weeks ago and shook the swimming world. “I think our faith in some of the systems is at an all-time low,” he said.
