30 Nov 2015

Hamburg pulls out of Olympic 2024 race

12:07 pm on 30 November 2015

The citizens of the German city of Hamburg have rejected a bid to host the 2024 summer Olympics with more than half voting against it in a referendum.

Olympic rings

Olympic rings Photo: PHOTOSPORT

Close to 52 percent voted against the 12 billion dollar project that was bidding along with Los Angeles, Rome, Paris, and Budapest to host the world's biggest multi-sports event.

Germany has to accept a second referendum defeat in two years with Munich's plans for the 2022 winter Games thwarted by a 2013 local vote.

The rejection is also a blow to the International Olympic Committee whose wide-ranging reforms voted in last year were aimed at making the Games more attractive to host cities.

"We have to accept the vote of the citizens," said German Olympic Sports Confederation chief Alfons Hoermann. "Olympics and Germany are not a good match at the moment."

Germans never showed widespread support for Hamburg, picked over Berlin earlier this year. Germany's football association is mired in a bribery scandal that bid chief Nikolas Hill said was doing Hamburg's candidacy no favours.

Support had been steadily dropping with the Paris attacks earlier this month raising more security concerns.

The IOC will elect a winner in 2017.

- Reuters