After months of plunging public support, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh in July abruptly pulled the plug on his city's bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The deal breaker? He didn't want to sign the host city contract, putting his 650,000 constituents on the hook if the Games ran a deficit.
Considering that every Olympics since 1960 has had cost overruns — big ones — and that Boston needed to build a lot of things to successfully pull off a Summer Games, it was a prudent decision. But it left U.S. Olympic officials in a very bad place with just a month and a half before the deadline to submit an American city to the international competition to host the Games.