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Rome has suspended a bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics to become the latest city to bow out of the process.

Boston and Hamburg, Germany earlier pulled out, meaning the only three bidders left are Los Angeles, Paris and Budapest, Hungary.

Staging an Olympics can be anything from mixed blessing to a complete disaster for the host city. This calls into question a quixotic, grass-roots campaign being pushed by local firm Pepper Foster Consulting for Portland and the state of Oregon to bid on the 2028 Summer Games.

Actually, quixotic is kind.

This is a fantasy bordering on a pipe dream.

Pepper Foster sees a 2028 Oregon Olympics as a vehicle to force the region to provide necessary infrastructure improvements.

For instance, Olympic transportation needs would push the Portland to address gridlock on the city streets.

Housing for athletes, officials and media could be converted to low-cost housing after the Games depart.

It sounds reasonable on paper until you get to the price tag.

Pepper Foster believes it would take $10 billion to pull this off, of which "only" $1 billion would need to come from the city and state.

That would be $1 billion that might otherwise go to, say, public education or the Public Employees Retirement System.

That assumes there is an idle $1 billion stashed somewhere only waiting to be invested.

TrackTown USA asked the Oregon Legislature for a $40 million investment to help with the staging of the 2021 World Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Eugene.

TrackTown probably was lucky to come away with a promise for as much as $25 million, and is struggling now to raise the rest privately.

Of course, the Olympics are bigger, brighter and shinier, a more exciting event.

But with bigger, brighter and shinier comes facility expectations.

The city of Portland or the state certainly would need to build a centerpiece stadium.

The University of Oregon's Hayward Field will be renovated for the 2021 World Outdoor. Including temporary seating, it is expected to be expanded to a capacity of 30,000 seats.

Beijing's National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, seated 91,000 for the 2008 Olympics. London's Olympic Stadium had an 80,000-seat capacity for 2012.

Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, which staged Olympic soccer and the 2016 opening and closing ceremonies, has 78,000 seats.

Rio's Olympic Stadium, site of the 2016 track and field competition, has 60,000 seats.

Even including Autzen and Reser Stadiums -- the football facilities at Oregon and Oregon State -- there isn't anything that big in Oregon.

Already there is pushback in Eugene about the Hayward renovation. Critics think it's too ambitious, and wonder how practical a bigger Hayward Field will be when the world championships leave town.

It's a persistent problem with Olympic facilities. They get built for the three-week party. Then what?

Pepper Foster wants to believe a bigger Portland stadium of, say, 50,000 seats could house the Portland Timbers, who regularly sell out Providence Park.

Providence Park could be repurposed into a baseball stadium and used to lure a major league franchise to town.

Left unsaid is that Portland couldn't find a neighborhood willing to accept a small-scale Triple-A baseball stadium.

So, where does an expanded soccer stadium go?

Fifty thousand seats sound ambitious for the Timbers, who have a fanatically loyal following that hasn't exactly crossed over to the mainstream.

Providence Park and its 22,000 seats is located near downtown and on two MAX lines. It's nearly perfect.

Even if you coaxed the Timbers into a stadium that might be too big for their fan base, and found the funding to remodel Providence Park, you still would need a Major League Baseball team willing to relocate.

In addition to Oregon-specific issues, staging an Olympics invariably costs more than anticipated.

Rio was 50 percent over budget when the Games began. The 1976 Games in Montreal were 720 percent over budget. The average overrun according to a University of Oxford study is 176 percent for a Summer Games.

In the end, none of this is likely to matter.

Should Los Angeles win the 2024 bid next September the Summer Olympics would not return to the U.S. for decades.

That would make Portland 2028 moot.

And that would be for the best.

-- Ken Goe

503-221-8040 | @KenGoe