12/18/24
June 22, 2006
Three finalists for 2014 Winter Olympics: The IOC Executive downselected Salzburg, Pyeongchang, and Sochi from the seven applicants. The final selection will be made by a vote of the full IOC membership. The selection was preceded by this report (PDF) (or download the conclusions only) from the IOC Candidature Acceptance Working Group.
The rest of the choices were pretty dismal here, from what I can see. 'cept maybe for the site in Spain, I'd agree. For that matter, what they have now ain't no chicken delight. Sochi has some winter sports infrastructure, but it's unclear if they really have the developed areas you need to host alpine skiing and snowboarding events, and you don't build that stuff overnight. Pyeongchang has hosted international competition in alpine and freestyle skiing, and probably snowboarding too, but the snow is pretty sketchy. Salzburg would be like the "Torino" Olympics, basically -- good mountains a bit of a drive out of town.
posted by lil_brown_bat at 10:20 AM on June 22, 2006
So the asterisk in the second link means that Pyeongchang was selected over Borjomi based on picking straws?! Seems odd to me; why not just have four cities downselected? Or two? Or, I'm reading it completely wrong.
Looks like the first link is broken. posted by redsnare at 12:10 PM on June 22, 2006
Borjomi was probably the weakest bid here. All the * means is "this list I'm giving you here is NOT in any ranked order, so don't read anything into the fact that we put Sochi first, OK?" Sorry about the busted link. Worked when I posted it...
posted by Amateur at 12:28 PM on June 22, 2006
I question the need for building a new billion-doller facility every four years. In this day and age the debt left behind after the Olympics is over, is huge. Have there not been enough world class facilities built in the last twenty years? It would seem to me that spending less money to upgrade existing facilities would make more sense. Why not have one summer and one winter Olympic facility on each continent and rotate between them. Just think how wonderful these permanently funded facilities could be.
posted by CB900 at 01:17 PM on June 22, 2006
The only real argument to be made against what you're saying, CB -- and it's a pretty weak one -- is that it would diminish the number of facilities available for non-Olympic (but still elite) competition in some sports where there isn't a commercial/paying-public crossover. Ice rinks and ski areas get plenty of use from the general public, but if you had only one Olympic site per continent, facilities for sports such as luge, bobsled, ski jump, and bike racing would become even fewer and farther between.
posted by lil_brown_bat at 01:50 PM on June 22, 2006
It would seem to me that spending less money to upgrade existing facilities would make more sense. What does sense have to do with it? But seriously, as long as cities are lining up to host the Olympics, this isn't going to change. Nobody's showing any sense on either side, here. Also, the IOC has been studying the escalating costs of hosting the Olympics for a long, long time. Check out the quote on page 3 of this IOC report... that's Pierre de Coubertin talking about the cost of venue construction in 1911.
posted by Amateur at 02:32 PM on June 22, 2006
Salzburg is a very beautiful area. I should know, I vacationed there once when I was stationed over in Germany. Great mountains, too. I fell down one once...
posted by wingnut4life at 05:21 PM on June 22, 2006
My prediction for Korea still stands. Also.
posted by mkn at 09:00 PM on June 23, 2006
I know I've said on numerous occasions that the host city selection is not that important ... but for the Winter Olympics geography does have a significant impact on the sporting competition. The rest of the choices were pretty dismal here, from what I can see.