By David Owen
October 24 – A top United States Olympic official has offered encouragement for Qatar’s emergence as a host of sports events, provided climate issues are adequately managed.
Scott Blackmun, chief executive of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), told an audience at the National Press Club in Washington, in answer to a question: “I think it’s fantastic that we have a number of countries like Qatar who are rising up and wanting to invest their substantial resources in sport. I think that’s a wonderful thing.”
Blackmun, a former soccer goalkeeper, went on: “I think we have to rely on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and international sports federations (IFs) to make sure that those investments are appropriate, and hopefully through the oversight of the IOC and IFs, when competitions are held in places that are hot, it won’t be at the expense of our athletes, because that’s critically, critically important.
“So we are very, very supportive of the arrival at the party of places like Qatar, but we are looking to the IOC and IFs to make sure that those competitions are held under conditions and circumstances that promote athletics, as opposed to the opposite.”
The Gulf region has hosted a range of international sports events in recent years, with Qatar in the process of preparing, amid unrelenting media scrutiny, for the area’s most high-profile tournament yet: the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
The United States, which also bid to host that 2022 competition, is increasingly expected to enter the race for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, with Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington vying to act as host-city.
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