The United States Olympic Committee announced Tuesday that it will submit a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics.
The bid for the Olympic and Paralympic Games will come from one of four cities that made presentations to the USOC board of directors on Tuesday.
Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco or Washington will become the first U.S. city to make an Olympics bid in more than five years.
The USOC board voted unanimously to approve a 2024 bid and will decide on a city early next year, months ahead of the International Olympic Committee deadline for submissions on Sept. 15.
A host city will be selected by the IOC in 2017.
"We are excited to announce our plans to put forth a bid for the 2024 Games and look forward to taking the next step of selecting from a group of four world-class cities to present a compelling and successful bid," USOC chairman Larry Probst said.
The last U.S. city to bid, Chicago, finished last among four finalists to host the 2016 Summer Olympics despite a push that included speeches from President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama before the IOC vote in Copenhagen, Denmark, in October 2009.
The four U.S. cities remaining as potential 2024 hosts were named as finalists in June, ending a 16-month process that started with the USOC reaching out to 35 cities.
The eventual winner will face a changing landscape.
As part of a revamped agenda approved this month, the IOC is aiming to make it easier for cities to bid on the Olympics by making the process more flexible and cost-efficient.
The reforms came amid rising costs and mounting wariness over the feasibility of hosting the games punctuated by the skittish bidding over the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Only two cities -- Beijing, China, and Almaty, Kazakhstan -- remain in the hunt for those games after several potential candidates backed out over lack of support.
Among other things, the new reforms could lead to joint bids by countries and would allow an Olympics host to spread out events among several cities.
The U.S. hasn't hosted the Summer Olympics since Atlanta in 1996. Los Angeles hosted the Summer Games twice previously, in 1932 and 1984. St. Louis in 1904 was the only other U.S. city to host the Summer Olympics.
USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun said details of the U.S. candidate's plans for a 2024 bid will be made public after a city is chosen.
The candidate will face opposition from at least two European countries after Italy announced this week it will submit one for Rome. Germany has said it would submit a bid for either Berlin or Hamburg.
[SportsNetwork.com]
