2022 Olympics

Never Too Early to Plan for the Olympics 2032 Olympics Part 1: India Initiates a Study

Thomas Bach and Narendra Modi
Thomas Bach and Narendra Modi

Bidders for the 2022 Winter Games were so few that the IOC ended up with a winning city, Beijing, that does not get much snow, and thus will have to manufacture it to hold ski competitions.

Bidders for the 2024 Summer Games dropped like flies – Boston, Rome, Hamburg, Budapest – forcing IOC to take its two remaining bids of LA and Paris, and offer them both the next two Olympiads, for fear of not having a decent bid for 2028.

And yet, despite the mounting dissatisfaction in localities where hosting the Olympics are most possible, India is gearing up for a 2032 bid for the Summer Olympics. According to Around the Rings, India’s Sports Ministry is about to initiate a feasibility study into a possible bid in order to convince the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, who has his doubts. “A study backed by the Indian Sports Ministry could help convince Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to flip his position on bringing the Olympics to the country for the first time.”

If the study indicates that India could organize an Olympics in 2032, then the India Olympic Association will ask the ministry officially for approval to make an official bid.

Modi had actually declined an invitation from IOC president, Thomas Bach, to make a bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics on the heels of a corruption scandal that was reported during India’s hosting of the Commonwealth Games. It is also likely that Modi wondered whether the Olympics would be the right area of focus amidst all of its social, financial and infrastructure needs. But Modi appears to be a man of data and facts, so the study is an attempt to provide a rationale and a plan.

According to The Times of India, a ministry source has stated:

We are keen on understanding where the country stands before we decide upon the future course of action. All things that go into hosting the Games will be discussed as we pose ourselves the question whether it is desirable and practical and whether we ought to consider bidding for Olympics at any point.

As a “practice run” to the Olympics, the India Olympic Association is also requesting the sports ministry to approve a bid for the 2030 Asian Games.

So will we see a New Delhi 2032 Campaign? We’ll find out 8 years from now in 2025, when the IOC is currently scheduled to begin the 2032 selection process.

So, yeah, don’t hold your breath.

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Beijing Selected as Host of the 2022 Winter Games – A Snow Job

Yao Ming supports Beining 2022 Bid
International and NBA basketball star Yao Ming.

It’s a sad day when the International Olympic Committee cannot even clear one of the lowest bars for choosing the host city for the Winter Games: snow.

A telling first line from the New York Times regarding the IOC awarding the 2022 Winter Games to Beijing. This is the first time the same city has ever been awarded the Summer and Winter Games, probably for the obvious reason that cities big enough to host the Summer Games simply don’t have big mountains or enough snow to host the Winter Games.

The reality is, the lack of snow did not prevent Beijing from being selected. Perhaps the main reason for Beijing’s success is that the Winter Olympics are currently considered a very expensive proposition by host cities, limiting the competition significantly. The only other candidate for these games was Almaty, Kazakhstan, which actually has snow.

In fact according to Andrew Zimbalist in his insightful book, Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup, the Olympics in general, and the Winter Games in particular, have had a declining number of applicants and candidates in the 21st century due to rising cost. As a recent example, he cites that Vancouver, which hosted the Winter Olympics in 2010 is a billion dollars in debt for bailing out investors in the development of the Olympic Village, resulting in cuts in service to education,

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