The worldwide Olympic Committee will announce the vote on the host city on July 31 in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia is hosting the 128th IOC executive board meeting where the vote for the…
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As the IOC prepares to choose between the Chinese capital and Almaty, Kazakhstan, Beijing backers hope that a wealth of venues and experience accumulated from the 2008 Summer Olympics will be enough to clinch the vote.
“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.
“As we write this letter, the Chinese government is carrying out an unparalleled attack on civil society”, it said, pointing to the recent wave of detentions against lawyers.
Speaking in Kuala Lumpur, Xu Jicheng, an official from Beijing’s bid team, said authorities were battling to clear the city’s smog-choked skies. But they found themselves as the only two candidates left after four European cities – including Oslo and Stockholm – pulled out for political or financial reasons. All Olympic facilities will lie within a 30km radius of Almaty, and they include existing venues such as the fir-tree-fringed outdoor ice rink at Medeu, a short hop from the city centre. “But snow is our advantage”.
Six out of the nine venues in the bid are already built, including the iconic “Bird’s Nest” stadium and “Water Cube” arena from the Summer Olympics, helping to keep down costs.
Two retired sports stars – former National Basketball Association player Yao Ming and two-time Grand Slam tennis champion Li Na – will appear on behalf of Beijing, while Sochi Olympic figure skating bronze medallist Denis Ten is on the Almaty team.
“To win the 2008 Olympics, China promise to allow space for Chinese citizens to protest during the games”. The Yanqing zone that would put on the Alpine skiing and sliding events is more than 50 miles away and Zhangjiakou, the location for Nordic and freestyle skiing and snowboarding, is almost twice that.
China is building a high-speed rail link between Beijing and the mountain venues, which will cut travel time to around one hour.
In an effort to tackle air pollution, Beijing upgraded its coal-fired heating system in urban areas to natural gas heating system and closed down heavy polluting plants. “This bid is about more than sport for us”, Almaty 2022 vice-chairman Andrey Kryukov said.
Weighing in Beijing’s favor is the IOC’s familiarity with China from the 2008 Games and trust that the Chinese can deliver. 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.
Both countries have human rights records that have been condemned by activist groups. The group cited a lack of credibility from the Chinese government, and a human rights record that often claims one thing and does another: “as a member of the UN Human Rights Council, it has failed to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and has ignored its obligations under worldwide human rights treaties, such as the Convention against Torture, which it has been a party to since 1988”, the letter states.
“Outside the context of the Olympic Games the IOC has to respect the laws of sovereign states”. “It is not a world government”. That means China’s three members won’t vote. The Summer Games can be held in most any major city – among the cities bidding for the 2024 Games are Paris, Rome, Budapest, Hungary, and Hamburg, Germany, with Toronto, Los Angeles and Istanbul possible bidders – because there is a summer atmosphere almost everywhere.
Only two cities are Olympic bidding finalists, for just the second time in 34 years.
“The Olympics has a global mission”.
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The prime minister also placed great emphasis on the fact that “twenty-five years ago we used to be part of the Soviet Union”.
