United States to bid for 2024 Summer Olympics

The United States Olympic Committee has announced it will bid to host the 2024 Summer Games, but the candidate city won't be selected until early next year.

Los Angeles, Washington, Boston and San Francisco have all made their final pitches for staging the four-yearly showpiece to the committee's board of directors.

"The board voted unanimously to move forward with a bid," said USOC chairman Larry Probst. "We are going to take our time and pick the city we think has the best chance of winning the competition from other cities around the world.

"This is going to be a really, really difficult decision. That is why we want to make sure we get to the best possible decision."

The United States has won the most medals at the last five Summer Games but it hasn't hosted a Summer Olympics since the 1996 Atlanta Games. The 2002 Winter Olympics were the last Games on US soil.

Los Angeles was the first up and Boston went last as each city was given 60 minutes at a meeting in Redwood City, California, to make their case for being able to accommodate 10,500 athletes competing at a dozen or more venues over two weeks.

All four cities have said it would cost between US$4 billion and US$5 billion to host the Olympics, not including infrastructure improvements such as airport expansion, public transit and highway upgrades which could take the price up as high as US$9 billion or US$10 billion.

"The board would like to have some further discussion," Probst said.

"We want to make a very thoughtful decision and the best possible decision and so the next part of the process is to get the board together again in the early part of January."