Victoria’s plans always seemed rather flawed. The regional model was heralded for its benefits in terms of sustainability, legacy etc etc, but seemed to ignore so much existing infrastructure available to host the Games. The idea it would save money seemed extremely optimistic.
Melbourne has so many high quality sports venues, and indeed hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2006. It claims to be the only city in the world with two indoor velodromes - but for 2026 they were going to build another, temporary, one. I don’t believe the state of Victoria doesn’t have a suitable venue for gymnastics - but they were going to build a new one. And then they were talking about road and railway improvements to allow people to actually get to the poorly connected venues they’d chosen.
It feels to me like the whole thing was more about spending money (and winning votes?) in the regional cities and forgot about the budget.
Where they go now who knows. London is always an option but somewhere outside the UK would be better. I would have suggested Melbourne if they weren’t the ones who just pulled out.