Cmon Dev...

Birds Nest is hosting IAAF worlds in a few weeks ;)

Thought I read that aloine events are 600 km north.

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2020 National Masters Champion - M40-44 - 400m IM
Canadian Record Holder 35-39M & 40-44M - 200 m Butterfly (LCM)

Really looking forward to IAAF world's. But yeah, that Bird's nest stadium barely gets used on a weekly basis. OK makes sense that the snow sport events are way north.

I think the IOC is a joke, and just as corrupt as FIFA

I also believe there should be a 3-4 city rotation, the amount of money to build all these facilities are ridiculous, and often a waste of money.

Wonder by 2022 can China build mountains out of mole hills? Nothing say winter wonderland like man made snow and no mountains. (Yes Cypress in Vancouver had too make snow for moguls but Whistler is mountains and "real")

It's a clear sign of the Olympic movement that Stockholm and Oslo pulled out. Too big too expensive too corrupt.

this said, I'm for Toronto 2024 bid. One thing Olympics bring to a city like Toronto is government together to build infrastructure that would otherwise never happen. And Toronto is a glaring eye sore of a city incapable of brave decisioning. Get the Olympics and all their transit and Gardiner debacles are solved.

Exhibits of cities capable of being visionary and don't need Olympics to get there...Boston, Chicago, Pittsburg and now Seattle are gentrifying the waterfront, demolishing their raised highway and building a tunnel.

Anyway I am way off topic!

Making snow to host Winter Olympics is hilarious to me. But the IOCs choices were slim.

Dev remember when Lillehammer Norway hosted? That was a winter Olympic venue!

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@rhyspencer

I think they do not need a rotation, just start rewarding bidders that have something like 80% of the venues already built. And changing some of the current standards for current venues. For example the Chicago bid needed to build a brand new stadium, because Soldier Field was just not quite big enough for the opening and closing ceremonies. But soldier field is right next to grand park, so someone on the Chicago committee came up with a proposal for part of the ceremonies to take place in the park and some inside soldier field, so that they could get way more people to see at least part of the ceremonies, possibly not even require tickets they could have enough room. But the IOC has standards, so Chicago with a freaking existing NFL statdium (that was just recently remodeled also), had to build a gigantic new stadium if they go the bid. In short the IOC needs to rethink their standards and start rewarding bids that are affordable instead of crazy expensive bids.

There is a downside that it does hold back developing countries even more. The olympics should represent the world, so it should not just take place in rich western countries.

I am so happy that Oslo turned down the 2022 Olympics. IOC is a joke and the Olympics is starting to be.
The organizers in Oslo had to publicize all IOC documents with their demands, and the demands were a dictatorship worthy.

I was waiting to hear your take on it. The fact that both Oslo and Munich pulled out is pretty telling.

Do you have any visibility on the snow sport proposed venues?

I was just over at Callahan Valley at Whistler. As I rode up there, I was thinking, "awesome road, no one on it". then I entered the Nordic Center and there was one car in the parking lot. Really sad, because such an amazing facility should be packed with athletes every day training, but it will turn into a white elephant. They should have put the Nordic venue in Cypress for Vancouver so that it was accessible by population after the games.

600 kilometers from Beijing, who the heck will use that facility after the games? In my view that is one of the biggest problems. Olympic facilities should be built in a way to leave a legacy that enables sport development, but the IOC just wants venues that are used once and no one ends up using later which become an economic black hole.

The Olympic venues should host the world's best athletes in conditions that don't compromise those athletes' health and safety. I'm sure that there are suitable locations not-in-rich-western-countries, but the IOC's recent choices are not shining examples of consideration to the athletes.

Beijing in the winter is going to be even more polluted than Beijing in the summer, due to the prevailing atmospheric conditions and the fact that in the winter you can't just tell everyone to stop burning sh!t to keep warm. Qatar (FIFA WC) is going to be ridiculous because of the temperatures and the sun exposure. Everyone need to stop pandering to the tinpot dictators of the IOC, FIFA and other world sport organizations so that the events can be about the sport and not about the politics or grandstanding.

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Less is more.

Here you have the mountain for alpine
http://www.businessinsider.com/...rely-any-snow-2015-7

To have good games you have to have it a place with history.
The problem with new places is that courses are bad, TV coverage is bad and the list is long.

I am more than average skiing fan and when I was happy that Oslo turned down IOC that says a lot about IOC. Sepp Blatter is a member.

qatar may turn out to be many things but a joke due to sun exposure and heat will not be one of them as it is current scheduled tto finish on December 23rd

The weather mid Nov to March is perfect, no dust, and in late dec. Jan and feb you need a sweatshirt in the eveningl

OK, the mountain venues are 2ish hours away. Plans for high speed rail to connect to there seems better than Vancouver to Whistler. One thing I can see about selecting Beijing is that they have mega infrastructure to run a proper games. If you have been there, the transport, communications and other infrastructure is impressive and it is really easy to get there from pretty well anywhere in the world. Almaty would be total unknown on all fronts. Oslo or Munich would be "better" from a winter sport angle, but I think Beijing one ups both on overall infrastructure. Still will be interesting to see the snow sports venues.

Not sure I follow you. Why does a place need history to be a good games? Why would TV coverage be bad?

It depends, Dev. I've ridden that road a few times over a few summers. Sometimes I see no one, sometimes I see XC skiers on those long skate/ski things with wheels (can't describe them better than that!) practising up by going up the road to the Nordic Centre, sometimes I see XC skiers on the same things on the Tarmac trails in the Nordic Centre area itself. It's certainly not packed every day, but it does get some use in the summer. I would imagine one thing is that there aren't enough bodies in town who want to do that, and only that in the summer every day.

BTW, did you get to ride up to the top of the bobsleigh track? There's a service road which (annoyingly) is sometimes blocked with a barrier, but it's a great little steep hairpinned climb. The other "must do" climb over there is the Duffey Lake Road on the far side of Pemberton heading to Lilloet.

Greg, i think the main problem is that Callahan is close to no one. It is not close to Vancouver to just whip up for a 60-120 min workout and still far enough from Whislter or Squamish that you won't go there for most dryland training. Given that 6-8 months per year is dryland training, the centers need to make money and be financially viable for the bulk of the year catering to paying athletes who will do activity at the center....or it becomes a while elephant pretty soon. Really too bad they did not put the Nordic center in Cypress close to where people live....you can always make snow where people live (provided cool enough climate), but you can't always put people into a remote place. Sadly the IOC/VANOC decided that it was more important to have the nordic center where there is a "better chance of snow" than where there is a better chance that people actually use the place post olympics.

As it turns out, the entire Vancouver games were raced pretty well on slush (as was Soichi)....would have been no diff at Callahan or Cypress. Sounds like Beijing will be on man made snow.

Did not get out for any of those climbs....will try next year if we make it out to Whistler (80% likely).

Dev

I read on a post by Powder Magazine from Facebook that the alpine venue gets 1cm of snow and the Nordic venue gets 5cm of snow. So it will all be 100% man-made snow. Hopefully cold enough that it doesn't melt faster than they can make it. I wonder where they are getting all that water? What happens to an ecosystem that is never covered in snow when it suddenly has a couple feet on it?

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

I was curious how many people might live 600 km north of Beijing. If the heat map on this web page is accurate, they will have loads of potential users for the facilities. I have a hard time imaging the scale of a country that's a bit smaller than Canada but has 300 times the population...

http://future-economics.net/...chinese-geopolitics/

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I was just reading that the NORDIC venues are 190 km NW of Beijing with a local provincial population of 4.5M. The Jan rainfall is a few mm but July is wet and humid with 80mm+ so sounds like they get decent precipitation at other times of year.

Agree......I'd love to see them back in Salt Lake!
I'm guessing >80% of our venues & facilities are used daily.
I think we did a pretty awesome job in 2002!

CJ
Slow 2x IM
2002 Olympic Volunteer

Yes we did!
Bring the Games back to SLC.
SLOC employee

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#swimmingmatters
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
The Doctor (#12)

Dev, not sure you've got the right facts about the Nordic venues for 2010. They wouldn't have been able to hold the event at cypress during 2010. The snow was a disaster there. The Callaghan site had plenty of snow, just a little slushy in the first few days.

There is already a Nordic venue in Vancouver. It certainly wouldn't be financially viable with the amount of snowmaking required and the warm weather that hits cypress. It would be a very short seasons and iffy snow. Not a great place for a Nordic venue to survive.

Canmore is only viable since the government massively subsidizes it and spent 25 million to upgrade the trails for international hosting. The trails at soldier hollow are also fairly empty in the dryland season, only a few elite training groups.

Toronto 2015 did a very good job with temporary venues. Thy have the advantage of getting away with smaller spectator requirements. The only venue that will be a challenge to keep financially viable will be the velodrome. The pools are already at max capacity and other things like the new fields at UofT are low cost and very useful. International hosting is a huge challenge, hence why only two countries stayed in the 2022 race.