The Polish metropolis of Krakow has turn out to be the newest metropolis to pull out of the race to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. With two of the remaining 4 metropolis’s additionally having doubts, is considered one of the world’s most iconic sporting occasions shedding its enchantment?
Krakow was largely seen as the favourite to win subsequent yr’s bid, after the entrance runner, Stockholm pulled out in January. However after a referendum, 70 p.c of the residents of the Polish metropolis determined towards holding the Winter Olympics, which the nation has by no means held in its historical past.
“Krakow is closing its efforts to be the host of the 2022 Winter Games due to the low support for the idea among the residents. … I regret that the referendum has put a definite end to … the project that I considered to be very important for the development of the whole region,” the metropolis’s Mayor Jacek Majchrowski mentioned in an announcement.
This means there are 4 cities remaining in the working for the 2022 video games: Oslo, Norway; Lvov in Ukraine; the former capital of Kazakhstan, Astana; and Beijing. Lvov’s drawback is clear being in a rustic present process political turmoil, whereas Oslo’s bid is being undermined by opposition from numerous residents in addition to considered one of the two events which makes up the nation’s coalition authorities.
“Believing that the Oslo Olympics would value below $8.5 billion is like believing in Santa Claus, when the Sochi Olympics value $85 billion,” mentioned Atle Simonsen, head of the youth wing of the proper wing populist Progress Party, who was talking to Norwegian tv. The precise value of the Sochi video games was $51 billion {dollars}.
That in impact would solely depart Almaty in Kazakhstan and Beijing, which hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics video games, left to battle it out and try to win the International Olympic Committee vote on July 31, 2015.
Hosting an Olympic video games has typically been seen as a means of producing additional revenue, or rejuvenating an space. This yr’s Winter Olympics in Sochi remodeled a sleepy seaside city into considered one of Russia’s most trendy metropolis’s, with services which is able to assist practice future Olympic champions for many years to come. The 2012 Olympics in London, not solely helped to swell nationwide satisfaction, but in addition remodeled a derelict waste web site in Stratford, into an Olympic Park, which now offers low value housing in addition to a variety of sporting services.
However, these advantages appeared not to enchantment to Stockholm. ”To manage Winter Games would imply an enormous funding in new sports activities services, for instance for the bobsled and luge,” mentioned Regina Kevius, the mayor answerable for sports activities occasions. ”There is not any want for that sort of facility after an Olympics.”