Brisbane hones in on 2032

A YEAR out from the Tokyo Olympics, Australia is already plotting to snatch the biggest prize in world sport.

Not a mountain of gold in Tokyo — though that’s still the short-term goal 12 months from now — but an even grander prize that’s 13 years away from happening: staging the 2032 summer Olympics.

If everything goes according to plan, and it is so far, Australia will be entrusted to stage the biggest show in sport with southeast Queensland following Melbourne (1956) and Sydney (2000) as hosts.

Brisbane has previously tried and failed to get the Olympics, but the rules for selecting the hosts have changed dramatically in recent times so everything has fallen perfectly into place. As Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates told News Corp: “It’s there to win.”

The game changer for Queensland’s hopes of success is that the number of countries bidding to host the Games has fallen off, despite the International Olympic Committee’s new flexible regulations that encourage potential hosts to use existing facilities rather than waste taxpayers’ money on constructing massive white elephants.

The IOC changed its rules to award the 2024 Olympics to Paris and the 2028 Games to Los Angeles after they were the only candidates for 2024, and have since introduced a raft of reforms for 2032.

These include allowing regions to stage the Games and extending the normal sevenyear window when host nations are chosen so they can have extra time to get everything in order.

The changes, developed by a working group chaired by Coates, were implemented because the IOC desperately wants a safe pair of hands after the troubled 2016 Rio Olympics, and that’s made Queensland an irresistible choice.