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Long road ahead for China's 2022 Winter Olympic bid

By Mark Dreyer: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, November 30, 2013

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People have fun in a ski resort in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province [File Photo]

The bidding game is officially afoot. Six bids have been lodged with the International Olympic Committee to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, with China's bid – in which Beijing would stage the ice sports and Zhangjiakou would stage the snow sports – facing competition from the northern European capitals of Stockholm and Oslo, the eastern European cities of Lviv in Ukraine, with Krakow (Poland) and Jasna (Slovakia) in a joint bid, and a final submission from the former Kazakh capital Almaty.

In what is perhaps a sign of the recovering global economy, there were twice as many bids this time as there were four years ago, after which Pyeongchang beat Munich and Annecy for the right to stage the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Both Beijing and Stockholm are bidding to become the first city to stage both a Summer and Winter Games, and the field represents an interesting mix of traditional and developing winter sports markets, setting up a fascinating race.

The first step for Beijing and the rest is to convert their bid into official candidate city status, as designated by the IOC next July. Further down the line, the IOC Evaluation Committee will visit the candidate cities in February and March 2015, and issue each with a report, before the final decision is taken on July 31, 2015, at the IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur.

On the surface, the Chinese bid will have its work cut out to sway the voters. Firstly, and most importantly, both the 2018 and 2020 Olympics will be held in Asia, in Pyeongchang and Tokyo respectively. The rules on rotation are unspoken rather than written into IOC law, but it would take a bid of almighty proportions to convince a majority of IOC members to award a third straight Olympic Games to the same continent.

This, of course, is not news to Beijing. Comments made by Beijing Sports Bureau chief Li Yingchuan shortly after the bid was announced appeared to suggest that the Chinese bid was of an exploratory nature, made in order to set up a successful bid in 2026 or 2030. This would follow a recent trend in Olympic bidding: Pyeongchang originally bid for both the 2010 and 2014 Olympics, and Rio and Tokyo both failed in earlier Olympic bids before their respective successes.

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