The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, has announced that Madrid will consider the “challenge” of applying to be a candidate for the Olympic Games and has assured that there is interest from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in the capital.
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“I am sure that Madrid is a natural host for the Olympic Games and that the IOC is almost more interested than Madrid in being able to come here to hold the Games,” he said during an informational breakfast organized by the Club Siglo XXI, where he stated that Madrid “is ready” to host “that adventure.”
Almeida responded this way when asked if, after the celebration of the first Spanish Grand Prix of Formula 1 in Madrid, the time has come to recover the capital’s Olympic aspiration. “This is a city that has that capacity and I am sure that we will consider the challenge and we will have to make decisions,” he said.
“The prophets of the apocalypse have failed”
The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, has stated that “the prophets of the apocalypse” who predicted that the Formula 1 Grand Prix hosted this weekend in Madrid would fail “have been wrong in their forecasts” and are not up to the standards of this city: “Let them keep raging.”
After the celebration of the Madrid Formula 1 Grand Prix, Almeida said that “yesterday we once again demonstrated that there is no challenge for Madrilenians that has not been achieved.”
Almeida referred to the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, to boast about what has been done around this sporting event: “If Madrid is in the situation it is in, it is because there are two governments that have managed to work together.”
Once the GP ended, Almeida said that what has been done will be reviewed to improve in future editions: “We will do self-criticism, yes, but what we will not do is beat ourselves up.”
“We have told the neighbors that we are willing to study all necessary measures to alleviate the inconveniences and we are obviously aware that one of the main ones may be the acoustic issue. But as we have done with them over these 15 months,” he said.
Almeida warned, however, that a possible candidacy must meet several conditions. The first will be to reach “consensus and institutional agreement,” as well as to prove that a broad majority of Madrilenians want the city to try again.
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He also called for facing the process “not from certainty,” but from confidence that Madrid has real possibilities of obtaining the designation. “What we cannot allow is for what happened in the three previous candidacies to happen to us,” he said.
It is worth remembering that Madrid applied to host the Games in 2012, 2016, and 2020, which were ultimately awarded to London, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo, respectively.
The mayor especially recalled Madrid 2020’s defeat in the vote held in Buenos Aires, where the candidacy was eliminated against Istanbul in the tiebreaker of the first round. “We cannot tell Madrilenians again that what happened in Buenos Aires will happen, that we were by far the best candidacy and we fell in the first vote against Istanbul,” he warned.
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