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Olympic Reaction Round-Up: Blame Game, Trump, L.A., More

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By Tom Acitelli
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The recently deceased Olympics bid certainly generated its fair share of strong opinions in a region already justly famous for not holding back. Here's a round-up of reaction from social and traditional media. We'll add to as the day goes on. (As for us, we're kind of relieved. The Games rarely make money for their host cities, no matter what you hear, and, in fact, often leave them indebted. Plus, they're generally a major disruption to the residents who inhabit an area year-round.)

· Boston.com's Adam Vaccaro says Olympics proponents underestimated from the start the opposition they faced and paid dearly: "Issues of transparency continued to fuel dissent for Boston 2024 even after the USOC made it the bidding city."

· Kyle Clauss in a "eulogy" at Boston Magazine: "The USOC pulling Boston 2024 isn't an 'L' on our foreheads; it's a badge of honor. The people of Boston, armed only with shoestring budgets and broken public records laws, stood up to the IOC, an organization as contemptible and endlessly wealthy as FIFA, and said: 'Slow your roll. We're doing things our way.'"

· The Globe's Joan Venocchi on No Boston Olympics, the up-from-the-people opposition group: "You can call them cynics, spoilers, or naysayers for the role they played in killing Boston's bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics. I call them heroes."

· The newspaper's Shirley Leung heard echoes of the past in the whole debacle: "Here's the issue: New Boston acts a lot like Old Boston. We still put up a fierce fight when someone tries something novel. Given the chance to think big about our future, we tied ourselves up in the minutiae of tax breaks and traffic studies. Accusations quickly replaced ambitions."

· USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan knows who to pin this on: "Everyone is blaming everyone and everything for this fiasco: local politics, citizen anger, the terrible Boston winter, promises reneged upon and the like. But there's one group that should take the ultimate responsibility: the organization that represents the United States on the world sports stage, the organization that should have known better. That's the USOC."

In remarks late Monday, Gov. Charlie Baker said the commonwealth was very much upfront with the USOC re: its timeline for a decision based on a consultant's report about the Games' potential impact. "We made very clear in March what our time frame was associated with this and we made pretty clear that we were not going to have this report until sometime around the beginning of August. And nobody ever said that was a problem until about a week ago." [WSJ.com]

· "Breaking sad news: USOC just pulled life support on the Boston bid... It's a sad day the NIMBYs won again..." —Curbed Boston reader

· There is near-uniform horror among residents of Washington re: the possibility that that city might land the Olympics now that Boston—which nudged aside Washington originally—is out. More from Curbed D.C.

· Here's a parallel for you, courtesy of Dan Kennedy writing at WGBH: "The defeat of the Boston Olympics bid was this summer's Market Basket story — a feel-good saga about ordinary people triumphing over the moneyed interests."

Your reaction?
· Five Would-Be Olympic Changes We'll Miss the Most [Curbed Boston]
· Our complete Olympics coverage [Curbed Boston]

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