However, IOC President Thomas Bach on Thursday said the provisions could only be enforced “in the context of the Olympic Games“.
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Should Kazakhstan’s pitch be successful it will become the first central Asian nation to host the Winter Olympics.
Much of the pre-vote focus had centred around the unlikely nature of the only two cities which remained in the race; with neither Beijing nor the oil-rich Almaty having particularly deep roots in winter sports, and both in authoritarian countries with chequered human rights records.
The first Winter Youth Games were held at Innsbruck, Austria in 2012 while Lillehammer, Norway will host the second edition next year. A planned high-speed rail line to Zhangjiakou is supposed to cut travel time to 50 minutes.
The Beijing 2022 bid committee said in a statement: “We are honoured and humbled by the IOC’s decision to award Beijing the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic winter Games”.
Beijing countered that it offers experience, reliability and the prospect of bringing winter sports to a market of 300 million people in northern China.
“Beijing 2022 will build on our existing snow-making capabilities to supplement snowfall… with minimal environmental impact”, he said.
All of Almaty’s venues are within 30 kilometres (18 miles) of the city, which the delegation portrayed as a “winter wonderland”.
President Xi Jinping earlier promised the “strongest support” for the Beijing Games in a video address to the IOC delegates. “There was no enhancement of our lovely mountains in the city with our abundant real snow and winter atmosphere”.
“China in winter is spectacular”, Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun said.
Kryukov called the Prime Minister “a superstar” for his impassioned plea to the IOC at the end of the presentation, but he was pleased with his team’s performance overall.
“After hearing the idea I was very excited”. The Kazakh bid team, which included Sochi Olympic bronze medalist figure skater Denis Ten, emphasized its bid’s advantages over Beijing – lots and lots of natural snow and a compact venue plan.
“We have 100 different ethnic groups and 40 different confessions” and have created “peaceful development”, Massimov told reporters Thursday while lobbying in Kuala Lumpur for the Olympic bid.
“Victory will mean a lot more if we actually win this competition”, he said. Fifteen members, about 15 percent of the IOC members, will not be voting.
Kryukov credited the lack of questions to the clarity and completeness of his presentation. It will choose between Beijing and Almaty.
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The proposed operational budget should be offset by revenues from the sales of tickets, marketing sponsorships and other income. And plans are already in place to get more people involved in a broader variety of winter sports. Almaty was due up first. Our request is not simply based on blind faith.
