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Rome mayor to announce decision on 2024 Olympics bid

ROME (AP) - Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi, who has long opposed the city's bid for the 2024 Olympics as unsustainable, will formally announce her decision on the candidacy Wednesday.

The mayor has scheduled a news conference on the bid at City Hall atop ancient Capitoline Hill.

Raggi has expressed her opposition for the bid since her candidacy earlier this year but hasn't made any announcement on the issue since being elected in June.

It could mark Rome's second withdrawal in four years after then-premier Mario Monti stopped the city's plans to bid for the 2020 Games in 2012 because of financial conditions.

If Rome withdraws, only Los Angeles, Paris and Budapest, Hungary, would remain in the running for the 2024 Summer Games.

The IOC will decide the host in September, 2017.

FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 15, 2016 file photo, Rome's Mayor Virginia Raggi attends a press conference presenting the European Mobility Week at Rome's Capitol Hill. The day the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement triumphed in Rome’s mayoral election, its exultant founder, comic Beppe Grillo, immediately turned his supporters’ sights on the next destination for what he calls their ‘’mission impossible airplane” soaring into national power. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File) The Associated Press
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