It seems like the number of countries wanting to host Olympics generally is shrinking as the cost of doing so becomes harder to justify. That was illustrated by the fact that the 2032 games were given to Australia without a bidding contest.
The Winter Games are pretty niche on a global scale. It’s pretty much all rich northern hemisphere countries taking part. The nature of the sports means that you’re never going to get the “Eric the Eel”-type competitors from African nations taking part in Alpine skiing events, so the number of countries taking part is always going to be limited and so is the number of potential host nations…
There’s a fairly disturbing quote from some Loughborough Uni researchers at the bottom of the beeb article that @joex posted saying only 10 of the 20 winter Olympics to have hosted the event since 1924 will have enough natural snow to host the event in 2050
If I remember correctly, Beijing were the only host city in the running this time round - and they don’t have to justify their expenditure to tax payers
It would’ve been good to have it in Aus - the ski-resorts are reliable snow aren’t they so no reason not to? and how perfect to have the winter olympics in july/august to screw with everyones training!
Yeah in theory. Oz has more snow coverage than Switzerland but the resorts are spread out and with the possible exception of Jindabyne, they are pretty small and would struggle to cope with the influx of peripheral staff for the games, let alone spectators.
However, I expect there was enough dodgy money to be thrown around to make stuff happen. The real issue with Oz snowfields is the weather. What tends to happen is you get great snow in the morning, then the sun shines a bit, it melts, then it gets windy AF and makes everything very icy.
Airports might be an issue as you’d have Melb about 4hrs south and Canberra about 3hrs north. It could work but events would be very spread out.
I’d rather poke wasps up my arse with a burning stick than watch curling. How do you make a supposedly competitive event out of cleaning the bloody floor? “Artistic” skating, moguls, half pipe, and ski jumping can get the f in the bin as well.
XC, Biathlon, LT speed skating, and super G. That’ll do me.
I like anything with speed and crash potential. Curling can FRO for sure, so can Rob Warner commentating on slopecrosspipe of whatever the fuck they call it.
A choice of 6 drifts to jump into, competitors have no idea on the depth of each one but there’s a glass divide which means the crowd knows which the shallow or deep ones are, get double points for going head first.