Budapest Olympic bid moves forward with court victory, new plans

Though Budapest has been considered something of a dark horse in the competition to host the 2024 Summer Olympics — running behind Los Angeles and Paris — the Hungarian capital continues to move ahead with its campaign.

This week, the Budapest 2024 committee won an important court battle when Hungary’s highest court again rejected a plan to hold a national referendum on the bid.

The committee has also released new renderings of its proposed Olympic Park, a cluster of venues located on the banks of the Danube River.

The drawings reinforce the notion of Budapest as a smaller, more intimate type of mega-event.

“We feel this is a right-sized Olympic Park, appropriate for a new era of the Olympic Movement,” Attila Mizsér, the bid committee’s director of sport and venues, said in a statement. “This compactness is reflective of our concept as a whole.”

The candidates must submit a third filing of documents to the International Olympic Committee in early February. After that, the IOC will send its evaluation commission to each city.

Evaluators are scheduled to visit Los Angeles in late April, Budapest in early May and Paris soon after.

The evaluation reports will be given to the candidates at a meeting at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Swizterland, in June.

That will give bidders a few months to prepare for their final presentations at the IOC session in September, when members will vote to select a host.

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