Like the Olympic flame itself, the dream to bring the Games to Toronto just can't be extinguished either. Just a few months after Mayor Rob Ford (and his brother) nixed any ideas for a 2020 Olympic bid, Pan-Am Games organizer Bob Richardson told the Globe and Mail's Patrick White that he's in the early stages of putting together a campaign to go after the 2024 Games.

Although the race won't officially begin until 2015, there's a couple of factors that will determine whether or not the bid plans will gain any momentum. The campaign will need the support of the mayor's office, which, based on previous comments by Doug Ford, might be a possibility. "It'd be nice. If it were maybe two, three, four years down the road, it'd be nice," he said of a future bid back when talk of 2020 run was put to bed.

Over and above support from the City, the Pan Am Games could also be crucial to any Olympic hopes. As White explains, " Depending on how smoothly they run, the Pan-Am Games will present either a launching pad or a stumbling block for the city's Olympic ambitions. After a particularly tidy Pan-Am hosting job in 2007, Rio de Janeiro ended up with the 2016 Olympics."

I don't know about anybody else, but it sounds like the Pan Am Games just got quite a bit more intriguing. But there's likely a third factor that will help to determine whether Toronto makes a run at the 2024 games — and that's public support. Of Ford's many decisions in his first year as mayor, few were as widely accepted without widespread criticism than the one to avoid pursuit of an Olympic. Is that a sign that the public just isn't struck by Olympic fever?