Rome city council strongly backs bid for 2024 Olympics
Last Updated: 25/06/15 9:48pm
Rome’s city council has voted 38-6 in favour of a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics.
The vote comes two days after Paris joined Boston and Hamburg in the race to host the Games, with Budapest also expected to be a candidate.
The city's Mayor Ignazio Marino said: "Like it was for Barcelona and London, the Rome 2024 Olympics will leave a renewed, modern and sustainable identity for our city.
"This is a vote that looks to the future and an opportunity to think about the city for the next generation."
Rome, which last hosted the Games in 1960, abandoned plans to bid for the 2020 Games due to financial concerns.
Their latest bid comes amid the widening ‘Mafia Capital’ corruption scandal in the country that has led to dozens of arrests.
Phone conversations intercepted by police and published in the media have revealed relationships between local criminal bosses and city politicians, where lucrative public contracts are concerned.
The votes against the bid came from the opposition 5-Star Movement, which has been against the candidacy since it was announced by Italian Premier Matteo Renzi in December.
Marcello De Vito of the 5-Star Movement said: "With Mafia Capital in full swing and in a city with Mafia infiltrations, spiralling budgets and services inadequate for its citizens, putting forward the Rome bid seems absurd to us.”
But Italian Olympic Committee president Giovanni Malago, who campaigned for the candidacy with bid leader Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, said: "Today sport prevailed over politics.
"Today's achievement is just the first step in a long journey which will continue over the next two years and which we must make together, in unity,” Malago added. “This is the only way to achieve our goals."
The bid is expected to include many of the venues used for the 1960 Games, including the city’s Stadio Olimpico, which hosted the 1990 World Cup final as well as four European Cup finals.
Rome is believed to considering a budget of €6 billion, which is roughly half of what London spent on the 2012 Games.
"Together, beginning with this vote, we'll learn to win this challenge and bring this event to Rome with the goal of transforming the city, curing old urban wounds and making our beautiful capital more livable, welcoming and modern," Marino said.
