IOC and 2022 winter Olympics

The surest sign that the bid process for hosting
the Olympics is broken is actually not the trail of
bribe money or crony-rich government contracts
at the feet of International Olympic Committee
members.
Sure, bribery might – might, maybe, allegedly,
perhaps – be how a now abandoned Olympic
Village got built in some muddy, bulldozed
acreage south of Sochi, Russia, rather than in
Salzburg, Austria, home to Mozart, the Sound of
Music and postcard pictures.
That's the cause, though, not the effect.
The effect is the bidding for the 2022 Winter
Games, which is now down to just two cities. The
final vote comes next summer.
There's Beijing, China, which doesn't actually sit
within 120 miles of a usable ski mountain, and
there's Almaty, Kazakhstan, which in its bid touted
itself as "the world's largest landlocked nation."
It's down to these two cities not because the IOC
narrowed the field, but because every other city in
the entire world said no.
Seriously, every other city said no.
That even includes cities that previously said yes
and made it deep into the bidding process only to
stare directly into the corrupt, humiliating voting
system, not to mention eventual unnecessary
construction costs, environmental effects, blown
resources and white elephants built to opulent IOC
code. They promptly high-tailed it the other way.
Russia said it spent $51 billion hosting the 2014
Winter Olympics. What, no one else is interested in
footing that bill?
Certainly not Oslo, Norway, not even at the bargain
rate of an estimated $5.4 billion in a nation of just
five million people. It once wanted desperately to
host the 2022 Winter Olympics and its bid was so
perfect that it was considered the favorite to win.
Then the country held a vote earlier this year and
55.9 percent of Norwegians opposed.
Wednesday the Norwegian government effectively
pulled the bid . Norwegians are known for the
ability to cross country ski really fast and being so
friendly they beg visitors to come experience their
picturesque nation. Since this involved the IOC
however, they decided against having visitors
come experience their picturesque nation to watch
them cross country ski really fast.
They aren't alone. Previous finalist Krakow, Poland,
saw 70 percent voter opposition and pulled its
application. A majority felt the same way in
Germany and Switzerland, killing bids in Munich
and St. Moritz respectively. In Sweden the majority
party rejected funding the proposed games in
Stockholm.
And that doesn't count all the places that didn't
even bother to try, including the United States,
which isn't sure when it will bid again after
Chicago somehow, someway came in fourth in an
effort to host the 2016 Summer Games. Rio de
Janeiro won and still has practically nothing built,
and IOC executives keep complaining nothing will
be ready on time. Gee, what a shocker.
Essentially the only places interested in hosting the
2022 games are countries where actual citizens
aren't allowed a real say in things – communist
China and Kazakhstan, a presidential republic that
coincidentally has only had one president since it
split from the old USSR in 1989.
Essentially the entire world has told the IOC it's a
corrupt joke.
"The vote is not a signal against the sport, but
against the non-transparency and the greed for
profit of the IOC," Ludwig Hartmann, a German
politician said when his country said no. "I think
all possible Olympic bids in Germany are now out
of question. The IOC has to change first. It's not
the venues that have to adapt to the IOC, but the
other way around."
Don't hold your breath on that.
It's worth noting there is nothing wrong with
finding new places to host the games. The world
changes. New nations gain power and money. Not
everything has to be in Western Europe. Rising
countries will do anything for the exposure. China,
for instance, is promising the construction of a
super high-speed train to those far off mountains,
even though Beijing is littered with abandoned
venues from its 2008 Summer Games. Price
doesn't matter.
And Almaty actually has a decent, viable and
potentially winning bid. It looks like a good place
for the Games, at least once you get past the Borat
jokes – "Other Central Asian countries have
inferior potassium."
Still, these are now the only choices.
If you think this is a crisis for the IOC, you don't
know the IOC.
Oh, sure, president Thomas Bach said reform is
needed for the bid process but this is a guy who
spent his time in Sochi clinking champagne
glasses with Vladimir Putin in an effort to help
soften Vlad's global image. It worked for a week
or so and Putin sent troops into the Ukraine.
(How's that working out for you, Thomas?)
The IOC has billions of dollars laying around and
billions more coming because to most people the
Olympics is just a television show and the ratings
are so high that the broadcast rights will never go
down. The IOC doesn't pay the athletes. It doesn't
share revenue with host countries. It doesn't pay
for countries to send their athletes. It doesn't lay
out any construction or capital costs. It doesn't
pay taxes.
It basically holds caviar rich meetings in five star
hotels in the Alps before calling it a day. That and
conduct weak investigations into corruption
charges of the bidding process, of course. "No
evidence uncovered" is on a win streak.
It's a heck of a racket. Only FIFA does it better.
The world has caught on, though, which is why the
mere mention of the IOC is toxic to all but the
most desperate and totalitarian of governments.
The USOC is a non-governmental body, so unlike
just about every other nation, it receives no direct
public financing. It would love to host another
Olympics, but the bid process is so unpredictable
that wasting money and political capital on trying
is risky. And then there would certainly be a
public cost in the construction and hosting.
You want a good host for the 2022 Winter
Olympics? Salt Lake City, which held it in 2002 and
has all the venues and infrastructure already in
place. There'd be some updating at minimal cost
and, bang, a great location.
The IOC is too snooty for that, however. They don't
like returning to the same city so soon so they'd
prefer either Aspen, Colo., (complete with bullet
train from Denver which has no practical use post
Olympics) or Reno/Lake Tahoe. That would require
billions building all the same stuff Salt Lake City
already has in place.
Anyone want to put that up for a vote?
Then there is all the kissing up and glad-handing
and who knows what else? Forget just the alleged
direct payouts. How petty and ridiculous are these
sporting aristocrats? Their actual listed demands
are ridiculous, including their own airport entrance,
traffic lane and prioritized stoplights. And just
providing a five-star hotel suite isn't enough.
"IOC members will be received with a smile on
arrival at hotel," the IOC demands.
Instead the world is giving them the middle finger.
So China or Kazakhstan it is, the last two suckers
on earth willing to step up to this carnival barker.
One lucky nation will win. The other will host the
2022 Winter Olympics.