As the 2024 Olympic Games officially kicked off Friday in Paris, members of the former committee that pushed for Boston to host this year's Games reunited at a local tavern to reminisce and catch up.
The Boston 2024 committee gathered at the Ford Tavern in Medford Friday afternoon for an Opening Ceremony watch party, giving members a chance to see each other nine years after Boston's Olympic bid was rose to the national forefront before ultimately being nixed.
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"A lot of folks here poured their heart and soul and effort into an effort which obviously ultimately didn't work out," former Boston 2024 CEO Rich Davey said. "But through that experience we bonded."
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Members brought with them stories of their time with Boston 2024, old promotional swag, and in Olympian and committee member Dan Walsh's case, an Olympic metal.
It was a celebratory gathering, not one to mourn, although the week was described as being a bit "bittersweet."
Davey is returning to Massachusetts from New York's MTA to serve as CEO for MassPort.
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"Obviously it was a big vision, one that didn't come to fruition, but one people believed in and you sort of were fighting everyday to make the case to Boston, to the state for what we thought was a bid deal," Davey said.
The big pitch at the time was a privately-funded Games, with a surplus, that would spur progress on important issues in Boston and Massachusetts, including transportation, housing and resiliency.
David Manfredi, whose firm was on the bid's master planning team, still believes the Games would have been a strong accelerant to solve some of Boston's most persistent issues. He, too, was present at Friday's reunion.
"I think one of the great things the Olympics could have done was to help us take on some of those issues in a very broad way, as opposed to project by project or block by block," Manfredi said.
Ultimately, the bid for Boston 2024 fell apart amid faltering support from the public. A grassroots opposition group formed, No Boston Olympics, with messaging that seemed to resonate with city locals. Concerns rose about transparency, potential for cost overruns and whether local infrastructure could handle a global event.
Still, this tight-knit group enjoys looking back, and considering what could have been.
"We’re huge fans of the Olympic moment," former COO of Boston 2024 Erin Murphy Rafferty said. "We’re so thrilled Paris is hosting this year and L.A. will be hosting four years from now. And no matter what, we’re champions for the Olympic movement, but maybe someday we’ll get it to Boston."
