Both presented their strong case.
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Xi said in a video message that was relayed to the special IOC session at Kuala Lumpur’s convention centre that a Beijing Games would inspire more than 1.3 billion Chinese to take up winter sports.
Lausanne, the Swiss city where the worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) is based, was chosen yesterday to host the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics. Lesser familiar Kazakhstan, whose 75-year-old president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has been in power since 1989, is seen as more of a risk by many IOC members.
But it held up the result and in Beijing performers and uniformed volunteers also erupted into dancing and flag-waving joy as the Chinese capital was named.
According to The Guardian, Beijing’s achievement was not an easy win for the city.
Residents celebrate as Beijing is announced as the host city for…
“Coca-Cola was quickly out with a “‘Congratulating for Beijing 2022’ Commemorative Can” at an event in Beijing, the government-published Shanghai Daily reported today.
The IOC had two more reasons for voting the way it did.
“The general feeling is that Almaty may do a little better than most people would have thought”, IOC vice-president Craig Reedie told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Beijing’s presentation played much less on emotion and sought mainly to reinforce the pitch that China can be counted on to deliver, as it did for the IOC in 2008.
The first Winter Youth Games were held at Innsbruck, Austria in 2012 and Lillehammer, Norway will host the second edition next year.
What is your favorite Winter Olympic sport?
Beijing plans to use several venues from the 2008 Olympics, including the “Bird’s Nest” stadium and “Water Cube” arena.
The Winter Games will be split between three sites: the city of Zhangjiakou, 125 miles from Beijing in the Hebei province; in Yanqing, a mountainous region to Beijing’s north-west; and in Beijing itself. And the biggest loser isn’t Kazakhstan, which lost its bid against China after other cities backed out over cost.
“Beijing has consistently clamped down on the basic human right of free expression by stifling criticism and silencing dissent”, said Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, in a statement following the awarding of the games.
A planned high-speed rail line to Zhangjiakou will supposedly cut travel time to 50 minutes. China’s size and political and economic might was a big advantage against its northwestern neighbor, which became independent in 1991.
“(I’m) excited because this is a new legacy for us in, that the first city ever in the Olympic movement will host the summer and”, said Ahmed Al-Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, president of the. Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, called it a “a slap in the face to China’s besieged human rights activists”.
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Six cities were originally in the race to follow 2018 hosts Pyeongchang in South Korea.
