2018 Winter Olympics
Template:Future sport The 2018 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XXIII Olympic Winter Games, will be celebrated in 2018, and are an international winter sports athletic event that has yet to be organized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The organization under the leadership of Jacques Rogge is currently preparing to mount calls for cities to bid for the honor of hosting the event.
Potential bids
US bids
United States cities have already announced plans to compete for the opportunity to host the 2018 Winter Olympics. Salt Lake City, Utah has shown its interest in hosting the games for a second time. The Lake Tahoe region, which is divided between California and Nevada and has also hosted the Winter Olympics (Squaw Valley 1960), has also conducted feasibility studies for these Games.
Denver, Colorado is conducting a feasibility study for either the 2018 Winter Olympics or 2020 Summer Olympics. However, Denver has the dubious distinction of being the only city to reject hosting duties without a compelling reason (Rome rejected its hosting duties for the 1908 Summer Olympics because of reconstruction efforts following a volcanic eruption). After being awarded the hosting rights for the 1976 Winter Olympics, in the early 1970s, environmentalists and anti-growth advocates forced a statewide referendum prohibiting the expenditure of public funds to host the Games. Also 1976 was the United States Bicentennial year, and Colorado was turning 100. People thought this was more important along with the referendum. Colorado voters approved the referendum, essentially killing the city's ability to host the Games. This is widely viewed as a huge hindrance to the bid effort, if not killing it completely. After thirty years of substantial growth, significant improvements in the region's transportation infrastructure (Such as the Denver International Airport), a host of new stadia and arenas, and billions of dollars invested by the ski resort and mountain recreation industries, the city is considering a new pursuit of the Games.
Lake Placid, New York is also rumored to be considering a bid. Lake Placid has previously hosted the 1980 Winter Olympics and the 1932 Winter Olympics. It is rumored that Lake Placid may try to do a joint bi-national bid with Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Montreal has previously hosted the 1976 Summer Olympics. If that were to happen, Montreal would become the first city to have hosted both the Summer and Winter Olympic games.
Asheville, North Carolina is considering a bid. The Mountains have ski resorts with growing interest. Tourism in Asheville is rising because of the Biltmore Estate. Asheville has no olympic history. The closest the olympics come to Asheville were the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. A new image is rising in Asheville as a youthful place. You can go Snowboarding to Mountain Biking, or just relax. If the US gets these games it would become the first nation to host five winter olympics. Asheville plans to honor all the US cities that have hosted the games in their logo and Mascots. Five Olympic Rings, Five Mascots, and Five Times.
Other international bids
The Austrian Olympic committee has announced that if Salzburg is unsuccessful in its 2014 bid for the Games the city will not get another chance to compete to host the games. Still, a German-Austrian bid with Innsbruck and Garmisch-Partenkirchen as the hosting cities is considered an alternative. Another possibility for Germany would be a bid from 1972 Summer host city Munich.
The French Olympic committee will need to choose between three potential candidate cities. Annecy, which had originally intended to bid for the 2014 Winter Olympics, has been joined in the running by Grenoble and Gap. However, the French committee is quite reluctant, preferring to focus on the 2024 Summer Olympics, which makes a French bid dubious at best.[1] (Nb. This source is in French) A French minister suggested that the games should be shared in between Lyon (France) and Geneva (Switzerland).
Among the Canadian possible bids are for Quebec City which previously bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics, Calgary which previously hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics, Yellowknife and a possible bi-national joint bid by Montreal (which previously hosted the 1976 Summer Olympics) and Lake Placid, USA. Lake Placid has previously hosted the 1980 Winter Olympics and the 1932 Winter Olympics.
Queenstown, New Zealand, is believed to be considering a bid for either the 2018 or 2022 Winter Olympics. Queenstown is refered to as the adventure capital of the world due to large number of adventure tourism activities on offer. Queenstown is also home to the largest ski fields in Oceania. Furthermore the resort town is undergoing huge redevelopment which will add another 12,000 to the population.
Christchurch is also a possible New Zealand candidate city. Factors in it's favour are it's large population and expertise.
Other possible candidate cities include Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Beirut, Lebanon; Östersund/Åre, Sweden and Tromsø, Norway, Shimla, India, as well as the cities which would fail in the 2014 competition.
