Birmingham, Ala., trying to land 2021 World Games
While the U.S. Olympic Committee weighs whether to bid for the 2024 Summer Games, another group is trying to land a similar, though lesser-known, international event.
Birmingham, Ala., is one of three finalists for the 2021 World Games, an Olympics-style event for sports that aren't on the Summer Games program. Three members of the International World Games Association will be in Birmingham on Friday and Saturday to visit the proposed competition and training venues, as well as facilities that would house and feed about 4,000 athletes from more than 100 countries.
"It's going to be very compact and easy to move around," said David Benck, co-chair of the Birmingham bid committee and vice president and general counsel at Hibbett Sporting Goods.
"I think that's going to be one of our advantages. It's not 45 minutes to an hour from venue to venue. It's literally five to 10 minutes," Benck said.
The 2021 host will be selected in late January. The other finalists are Lima, Peru, and Ufa, Russia.
The World Games haven't been in the U.S. since 1981, the first time the event was held. But when Benck and Scott Myers, executive director of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, visited the 2013 Games in Cali, Colombia, they realized Birmingham would be a perfect host.
"After seeing the facilities and seeing the games, we said, `Hey, we have everything in Birmingham right now to host the World Games,'" Myers said. "It wasn't necessary that they were going to the New Yorks and the Chicagos and the L.A.s So it was an opportunity for Birmingham to show what a first-class city it was."
And with the World Games being run under the patronage of the International Olympic Committee, it's another opportunity for the U.S. to impress the international sports community. Many sports that once participated in the World Games are now in the Olympics, including beach volleyball, trampoline, triathlon and taekwondo.
The U.S. hasn't hosted an Olympics since the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, and New York and Chicago were defeated in embarrassing fashion when they bid for the Summer Games. Relations between the USOC and IOC have improved greatly since then, and the USOC expects to decide in the coming months whether to bid for 2024.
"I don't know how it would impact the USOC and its efforts to bid for the 2024 Games, they're separate entities," Myers said. "I don't think it helps. But I don't think it hurts them."