The Italian team representing the candidacy of Rome for the Olympic Games in 2024 arrived today in Lausanne, at the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach said Thursday that he was impressed by Rome's dedication to its bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. "I'm impressed by how the city of Rome has taken its bid for the 2024 Olympics to heart," Bach told an Italian delegation led by Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino and Cabinet Secretary Claudio De Vincenti in Lausanne for the first technical meeting with the candidate cities. "Rome has everything needed to be a candidate for the 2024 Olympics," said Marino. The Italian capital is, so far, facing competition from Boston, Hamburg, Paris and Budapest for the Games.
Rome hosted the epic 1960 Olympics and carried off a largely successful edition of the World Swimming Championships in 2009.
The city has said that many of the required sports facilities are operational and would only need upgrading, meaning it could hold a relative low cost event.These facilities include the Stadio Olimpico which has a running track for athletics.
   

"There won't be white elephants in 2024, useless works that offend our heritage," Marino said as he presented the bid.
 "We want to do things properly, with sobriety and without waste".
He added that the legacy of the 2024 Games will belong to the "whole world" as, if Rome lands the Olympics, the games will further enhance one of the globe's most beautiful cities.
"Everything that will be built for the 2024 Games will be done in a way to preserve and celebrate the history and beauty of Rome and will enrich and develop both," Marino said. "The 1960 Olympics teach us a lot. They were the symbol of the economic boom, of the prosperity and growth that gripped Italy and Europe as a whole after the tragedy of the World War.
"The 1960 Games are universally remembered as the first to be televised. The 2024 Olympics will be the Olympics of social media, with thousands of images sent by the television networks and bounced in the individual networks with thousands of different tones. Billions of different people will tell each other the story of their Olympics. So we are faced with another epoch-making change".

In the photo, from the left: the Secretary to the Prime Minister, Claudio De Vincenti; the Director General of Roma 2024 Committee, Claudia Bugno; the President of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach; the Mayor of Rome, Ignazio Marino; and the Secretary General of CONI, Roberto Fabbricini.