International Olympic experts say three major strategic questions must be answered by the USOC before they can determine whether to bid on the '24 Games following Boston dropping its bid: 1.) Can L.A. develop a credible bid within a greatly truncated timeframe? 2.) Can L.A. beat Paris, Rome, Hamburg, Budapest and maybe Toronto? and 3.) Will the Boston faceplant hurt the USOC on the international stage? Former IOC VP Dick Pound said the timing does not matter. The IOC has set a Sept. 15 deadline for cities that intend to bid, but Pound said, "I don’t think the last minute thing is of any consequence at all. Los Angeles would have had its project and proposal all worked up at the time the USOC was considering the bid (in December).” Furthermore, he said, Boston has not actually submitted anything yet, so there is no sunk cost. "Until you actually put an applicant in, you haven’t actually put an applicant in." The tougher question is whether the USOC should bid, knowing that serious contenders like Paris and Rome are all-systems-go. The current field of four declared candidate cities is widely seen as particularly strong. “The bigger issue is the USOC cannot afford to enter into the '24 race officially and then have a further mega-embarrassment after having lost with New York and having lost with Chicago,” said former IOC Marketing Dir Michael Payne. “You have to ask, in view of the nature of the field I’m now dealing with, do I think I can put a winning campaign together? If there are serious question marks over that decision, then I think you have to look long and hard about if you want to take a pass on ’24." The rapid unraveling of the Boston bid is the third time in a decade that the USOC has backed a major American city’s pursuit of the Summer Games unsuccessfully, and the prior losses (N.Y. ‘12 and Chicago ‘16) still reflect negatively on the committee. But Pound says L.A. can still help voters forget about Boston’s woes, if L.A. can move quickly. “On Boston, all of this will be long forgotten if the USOC has a strong candidate,” Pound said.
