Budapest applauded by international sport leaders

The short travelling times, the harmony between the city and the Olympics developments and the beauty of Budapest were praised by the representatives of 22 sport unions, who visited the Hungarian city competing for the organisation of the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics, in the past four months. Since then, based on ongoing agreements, the planned locations of many events, such as the modern pentathlon, rowing or mountain bike, have changed. The latter changed from Hármashatárhegy to Testvérhegy, reports Origo.

According to the announcement of Budapest 2024 mainly the presidents, secretary-generals, sport and event managers of the sport unions travelled to Budapest, where each of them spent an average of two days.

The hosts showed the overall conception of the Budapest Olympics, the so-called master plan, the visitors could take a look at the location of the Olympic Village and travel to the competition locations, which are already existing in the capital city and outside Budapest, or are included in the application. Besides, the delegate of the Hungarian sport union made a presentation on the situation of sports here, and the guests could also visit the Visitor Centre on a pram stationing on the Danube.

According to the announcement, the unions of all the 28 Olympic sports were invited to Budapest, and there were even organisations that did not travel to any of the competing cities, neither to Paris nor Los Angeles. For example FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) should have visited many stadiums, but they did not accept the invitations because of the lack of time.

The representatives of FINA (International Swimming Federation) have already visited Budapest many times – regardless of the Olympic tender – because of the world championship next summer, while ICF (International Canoe Federation) has indicated many times that they found the track in Szeged to be one of the bests in the world, and organised several competitions there, so they did not find it necessary to visit again.

Dagály Swimming Complex Photo: MTI/Máthé Zoltán

UCI (International Cycling Union) presented some sport-professional and long-term suggestions when they visited the planned mountain bike track on Hármashatárhegy. These, and also advices of other professional organisations were taken into consideration, so they marked Testvérhegy as the location where a significant afforestation is being done in collaboration with the local government.

There are no obstacles to organise the future competition at Testvérhegy, the unused mine in the new location would transform in a way that later they could try to make community sport available here, in collaboration with the local government.

Photo: Budapest2024.org

The modern pentathlon is planned to be located at the Atlétikai Stadion, but it is actually not suitable because of sport-professional reasons, so they started to plan to organise the future Olympic competitions in Kincsem Park.

“This is the first Olympic tender where the candidate city is continuously negotiating with the international sport unions” – said Attila Mizsér, Sport Manager of the Budapest tender. He emphasized: a dialogue was created, federates are following the development of the master plan all the time, and in there are many suggestions that were made by them, so the people working on the tender can continuously improve the plans.

Photo: facebook.com/budapest2024

“We find that really useful, because international sport unions know the best what the sports and athletes need. This way the athlete’s first principle included in Agendga 2020 can be endorsed even more based on the feedbacks of the federates, which is essential, not only for us, but also for the future audience and the media’s point of view” – said Attila Mizsér.

The host of 2024 Olympics will be chosen by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lima next September.

Photo: Budapest2024.org

Copy editor: bm

Source: Origo