Many in Boston never became excited about the prospects of hosting the Summer Olympics in 2024. The city that has witnessed championships by the home teams in all four major Americans sports over the last decade showed no enthusiasm about badminton, equestrian dressage or synchronized swimming. At times, its denizens were downright dismissive.

Boston citizens and commuters were far more worried about traffic disruptions and the potential for higher taxes to pay for building Olympic venues than they were enamored over the status of being an Olympic host city. Perhaps when you consider yourself the cradle of liberty (sorry, Philadelphia), are home to some of the world’s great universities, and count 35 championships among your baseball, football, basketball and hockey teams, the Olympics just isn’t that big a deal.

Therefore, when the announcement came Monday that Boston and the U.S. Olympic Committee had ended discussion of Beantown serving as a host city, citizens greeted it more with relief than disappointment.

It is hard to disagree with such sentiments. The cost associated with hosting a modern-day summer games is astronomical, the inconveniences significant, and the economic boost fleeting. Despite pledges to the contrary, facilities constructed for such uncommon sports as track cycling and handball get little or no use once the games are over.

In large part it comes down to whether the prestige of hosting the extravaganza that gains worldwide attention is worth it. Most Bostonians decided it was not.

It became clear the plans were in trouble when Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, initially excited by the prospects of being an Olympic city, detected the political wind shift and announced he would not sign a host city contract that put his city on the hook for cost overruns. That was not the kind of commitment the Olympic Committee was looking for and it was goodbye games.

On a sadder note, those in nearby states, including Connecticut, would have had the chance to attend an Olympics without having to travel far, while free of the cost and inconvenience borne by Boston and Massachusetts.

And it does sting U.S. pride that the nation has not hosted a Summer Olympics since the Atlanta Games in 1996 — though the sting isn’t terribly strong. Attention now turns to Los Angeles as a possible host city. As Massachusetts native and ESPN Grantland blogger Charles F. Pierce put it: “Good luck to you now, Los Angeles, home of four million suckers.”

How Boston of him.