Amidst the various nations’ Olympic Trials taking place around the world with athletes attempting to qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics, the bidding process for the 2024 Summer Games is still going strong.
As a refresher, the sites in contention to host the 2024 Summer Olympic bid include Paris, France; Los Angeles, California; Rome, Italy; and Budapest, Hungary.
Just this week, Budapest 2024 organizers released the bid’s official logo and kick-off video, as unveiled at a ceremony along the Danube River.
According to logo designers, the emblem is aimed at depicting the iconic imagery of Budapest, complete with the Danube, Hungarian flag and Liberty Statue all represented within the Olympic Rings’ colors.
The video is more a nod to Hungarian culture than to Olympic sport, where faces and locales of Hungary are strung together in the approximately 90-second promotional piece entitled “Time to Feel”. The video is immediately launched upon landing on the bid’s website, also now live.
Since the unveiling, Budapest organizers have faced some criticism in the delay of launch compared to the other bid cities. Rome officially launched its bid back in December, while Rome and Los Angeles kicked off their candidacies in February of this year.
However, Bid Chairman Balázs Fürjes insists to InsidetheGames that there are many advantages to waiting this long.
“When there are four competitors in a group and three do everything at the same time then maybe there is more attention to the fourth city doing it at a different time. The real campaign starts in February 2017 after the delivery of the last Bid Book and we could have launched the logo any time prior to then,” he stated.
He continued, “Having the Olympics and Paralympics would promote the development of Hungary. ”
During a speech at the ceremony, Fürjes further commented that, “We are one of the only countries in the top 10 most successful which has not held the Olympics. We have to have trust, belief, co-operation, collaboration, as well as hard work and a bit of good luck of course.”
The host of the Summer Olympic Games will be announced at an International Olympic Committee (IOC) session in Lima, Peru in September of 2017.