ROME -- Mayor of Rome Virginia Raggi said Wednesday at a press conference in Campidoglio that the Eternal City will not be a candidate to play host to the Olympic Games in 2024.

 The moment of truth has arrived -- the resounding NO to the Olympic games was, as widely expected, made official at the 3:30 p.m. press conference in Rome that was postponed to half an hour later. Italy will after all not be hosting the international sporting competition in 2024, as initially planned.

 Raggi arrived over half an hour late to a meeting with the president of the National Italian Olympic Committee, Giovanni Malagò due to take place just before the press conference Wednesday afternoon.

 “We reorganized our timetables in order to be on time,” said the Italian sport official after waiting 35 minutes, “but considering I have been waiting here half an hour…it is just too much.” He subsequently left.

 Malagò had suggested that him and Raggi live stream their meeting, but the mayor refused this suggestion.

“We are here today because we made a decision to undertake this process. We took on that responsibility,” Raggi announced when she finally arrived at the Campidoglio press conference.

“We do not have anything against the Olympics or against sport. We just do not want it to be used as a pretext for other things. We are making so many other commitments to sporting life in our city," she said, citing various examples. "We just do not want to say yes to this Olympic competition and then be left with empty, unusable sports centres, while still having to allocate our taxes to this huge commitment years later. We are still paying back our debts for the Olympic games held in Rome in 1960."

 The mayor of Rome cited an Oxford University study about the negative effects on countries who have hosted the games to back up her decision. “The Olympics are a sort of dream that at a certain point turn into a type of nightmare.”

 Raggi said that she did not want Italians’ taxes being spent on this competition when it is not even in the interest of most of them. In a survey conducted previously in Rome about the Olympics, almost 70 percent of Romans said no.

 "In fact, it is a constant Olympic task trying to get around Rome everyday. The city is not fit to live in, to get around in. We have to raise the living standards of our city up to the standards of other European cities. This is what we need to spend public taxes on."

 “It is irresponsible to say yes to this candidature,” said Raggi.

 nkd