The Gold Won’t Go to L.A.

For all their fame, tradition, and monumentality, the Olympic Games are fickle. Cities vying to host the summer Olympics have always lined up and competed with one another ferociously, promising stadiums and arenas that would rejuvenate neglected neighborhoods and turn brown fields green. Citizens learning that their city would put on the Olympics used to dance in the streets, into the night. But for the 2024 Olympics, competition to hold the world’s premier sporting event thinned out because three of the contest’s five contenders—Budapest, Rome, Hamburg—checked out of the running, their bids pulled by citizenries that feared monumental costs would outlive two weeks of televised glory.

For each success—Barcelona in 1992 and London in 2012—in which the Olympics catalyzed hugely effective programs in city building, with parks and coliseums spurring lasting urban improvements, there have been plenty of washouts. The bill for overbuilding in Athens in 2004 stressed the entire national economy, leaving a legacy of spectacular but underused venues, some of which had to be torn down. Likewise in Rio in 2016, which burdened an economy already in crisis. Its legacy also included overbuilt venues that had to be demolished après Olympics.

By 2017, during the bids for the 2024 games, the two cities left standing after the others withdrew were