Washington wants 2024 Olympic Games

No stranger to the art of campaigning, Washington has thrown its hat into the ring as a candidate for the 2024 Olympics.

The announcement came Tuesday as District of Columbia officials said they have formed a nonprofit group that will seek to bring the Summer Games back to the United States for the first time since 1996 in Atlanta.

“We are the only major capital city in the world not to have hosted the Games yet,” said Bob Sweeney, president of DC 2024.

Washington joins Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Tulsa, Okla., as places where officials have openly discussed their interest in hosting the Olympics. There has also been talk of a joint effort between San Diego and Tijuana. Other contenders could include Paris, Rome and Doha, Qatar.

The U.S. Olympic Committee recently contacted 35 American cities to gauge interest. It is still early in a process that will not see the International Olympic Committee selecting a winner until 2017.

Washington tried for the 2012 Games but lost out to New York in the domestic bidding competition. Those Games were held in London.

D.C.’s current effort would seek to hold events across a wide stretch of land from Baltimore to Richmond, Va. Sweeney told the Associated Press that the area has “more sporting facilities in a 40-mile radius than any other city in the U.S.” and “more than 100,000 hotel rooms.”

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