Olympics: Paris, Los Angeles both poised to win race to host Games

The IOC meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland had initially been forecast as a key stage in the battle for 2024, with teams from the French capital and California mega-city making fresh pitches to voters.

But the Paris-Los Angeles rivalry has been muted by an IOC plan to ensure that both cities come out as winners.

The IOC, which has struggled to attract prospective hosts given the enormous cost of staging the Games, did not want to turn either city away.

So IOC chief Thomas Bach pushed a plan to have both 2024 and 2028 awarded together at the organisation's main annual meeting in Peru in September.

That proposal, endorsed by Olympic executives last month, is expected to be rubber-stamped by the IOC's roughly 100 members on Tuesday.

With no other cities in the running, the vote would effectively guarantee hosting rights to Paris and Los Angeles.

And it looks increasingly likely that Paris will go first.

The French side has insisted it was exclusively focused on 2024, the centenary anniversary of the last Games in Paris.

Los Angeles, which last hosted in 1984, has indicated it was open to waiting four more years.

Both bids came to Lausanne with top-level political support.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been a vocal advocate of Paris 2024, met IOC top brass on Monday on a tour of the Olympic Museum, set on a hilltop overlooking Lake Geneva.