DALLAS — The Summer Olympics get underway Friday in Paris, France, where athletes from around the world will float the River Seine in an Eiffel Tower-featured spectacle of an opening ceremony.
And just think, that could have been the scene in Dallas.
Well, maybe not the River Seine/Eiffel Tower part.
But Dallas did put in a bid for the 2024 Olympics, and for a region that's landed a Super Bowl (ice storm notwithstanding), Final Four, NBA All-Star Game, and countless major college football bowl games, not to mention a whole slate of FIFA World Cup games for 2026 ... it wasn't out of the question that Dallas could have landed the biggest sports prize of all.
Alas, the U.S. bid went to Boston.
Boston ultimately canceled their bid, giving way to Los Angeles, which landed the Summer Games for 2028.
Still, a Dallas Olympics is interesting to imagine. North Texas has no shortage of sports venues, and most of them would have been put to good use, according to the official Dallas 2024 plan, which was created more than a decade ago.
"Venues and infrastructure are the big things [in a sports bid process]," said Matthew Wood, the Dallas attorney who helped lead the city's Olympics bid. "That's why I thought Dallas was a perfect location for this."
The Dallas bid touted the region's overall transportation options: Two major airports in DFW and Love Field, light rail and downtown trolleys, the Trinity Railway Express connecting Fort Worth and Dallas, and a network of freeways.
And it made clear the region had more than enough hotel rooms; over 110,000 at the time, including 80,000 east of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and 40,000 within five miles of Downtown Dallas.
But the main focus of the bid was on using existing venues and buildings and creating a "Pedestrian Games," with the bulk of the competitions and events being held within a three-mile radius of downtown. Many of the competitions would have been held at either Fair Park, just southeast of downtown, or the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, two locations separated by a short DART ride. Fair Park is also where the Olympic Village, which houses the athletes, would have been located, Wood said.
Some of North Texas' bigger venues would have been part of the mix as well, including AT&T Stadium in Arlington for gymnastics and American Airlines Center in Dallas for basketball. There also would have needed to be some buildout of temporary seating for popular events like swimming, which would have been held at SMU, Wood said.
But many of the events would have been in the Fair Park-downtown area, "creating a pulsating focal point for our Games," according to the bid presentation.
That's not to say a Summer Games in Dallas would not have had a few wrinkles.
The Dallas pitch was that it would be held in June, which is still plenty hot in North Texas but typically not as bad as late July and early August.
The main athletics stadium for track and field would have been the Cotton Bowl, which would have had to be reconfigured to install a track.
And Dallas, as you might know, lacks an ocean. So an event like sailing would have been held in Corpus Christi. (This year's sailing will be held in the South of France, while the surfing event, which was added for the 2020 Games, will be held in Tahiti, by the way).
Here were the main proposed venues, and the events they would have held, for a Dallas-based Olympics:
Fair Park
Events: Athletics (track and field), boxing, cycling track, soccer, handball, weightlifting, wrestling freestyle and Greco-Roman
Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center
Events: Badminton, fencing, gymnastics rhythmic, judo, table tennis, taekwondo, trampoline, volleyball, weightlifting,
AT&T Stadium
Events: Gymnastics (artistic)
Great Trinity Forest
Events: Archery, cycling mountain, equestrian dressage, equestrian eventing, equestrian jumping, golf, modern pentathalon, shooting
Keeton Park
Events: Cycling BMX, tennis, rugby
American Airlines Center
Events: Basketball
Trinity River/Lakes
Events: Beach volleyball, canoe slalom, canoe sprint, cycling road, rowing, triathalon
SMU
Events: Water polo, swimming, diving, synchronized swimming
