Representatives for Almaty, Kazakhstan, will wait eagerly to hear if their bid outdoes Beijing on Friday when the global Olympic Committee decides which city will host the 2022 Winter Olympics.
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The 2010 gold medalist figure skaters Shen Zue and Zhao Hongbo were also brought in by Beijing bid officials to speak in favor of the Chinese capital as the 2022 host, despite criticisms that much of the snow for ski events will have to be artificial and the Alpine venues are spread too far from the city. That requires situating the ski and sliding events at venues in Yangqing and Zhangjiakou, 60 and 140 km, respectively, outside the city, while indoor events will use venues in Beijing’s city center.
This change not only helped IOC members make their choice, it also provided clear guidance to the candidate cities on ways to strengthen their bids. “So when our bidding demand meets people’s sports demands, there will be more and more winter sports in”, said, director of public information department of Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games Bid Committee. “In the next four to five years, Kazakhstan will come out of an era of low prices for commodities even stronger and more competitive”, he said. Malaysia is hosting the 128th IOC executive board meeting where the vote for the…
But IOC president Thomas Bach, who pushed for and got a unanimous rubber-stamp approval of Agenda 2020 at last December’s extraordinary session in Monaco, declared then that the starting gate was closed.
Li Maocuo, 22, a Tibetan walker from Duoba plateau training base in northwest China’s Qinghai Province, predicted that Beijing would defeat its opponent Almaty in Friday’s vote in Kuala Lumpur.
An ice sculpture promoting Beijing’s bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics.
China will still have to build many top-class winter sports facilities from scratch, including the country’s first competitive bobsleigh track, and an Olympic village and Nordic skiing centre in a now barren and windswept landscape.
“As an Almaty resident and patriot of my city, I would certainly want the Games to be held here”, political analyst Aidos Sarym said.
However, the hosting of the Winter Olympic Games in Almaty is not going to be expensive, as reported by the press release from the prime minister’s press servie.
Previous Olympics: 2008 Summer Games.
Yessimov also reiterated the government’s firm support for the bid and assured that should there be any budget shortfall, the government would be ready to tap into its $70 billion sovereign wealth fund. A planned high-speed railway would take passengers from Beijing to Zhangjiakou in 50 minutes, as said by a Beijing 2022 promo video launched last fall.
Weighing in Beijing’s favor is the IOC’s familiarity with China from the 2008 Games and trust that the Chinese can deliver. Had Oslo and Stockholm, the two most attractive candidates of the original group, known that they could have gone the existing-temporary-demountable venue route they might well have stayed in the chase and the IOC would have had the kind of idyllic winter setting and spirit it has rhapsodized about ever since the French resort of Chamonix staged the first snow-and-ice Games in 1924.
Human rights groups have doubts about both countries. In response to this guidance, the IOC Evaluation Commission considered the views of independent non-governmental organizations with respect to human rights, labour rights, media freedom and the environment in assessing the two Games bids.
IOC votes can be unpredictable, as members vote often for individual reasons. That’s all the assurance that the IOC needs in an election where the only other contender is Borat’s homeland.
Still, the Kazakhs are optimistic: the Astana Times published a sugary “good game” editorial earlier this week, writing that “no one who has been following the process closely should be shocked if the underdog comes out on top or be concerned that Almaty would not stage first-class Games”.
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“We were watching the opening ceremony live on TV that evening, eating beef and mutton and drinking highland barley wine”, she said.
