GOING FOR GOLD
Hobart’s 2020 Olympic bid
FOR those who dared to share this city’s biggest dream, sometime around now champion axeman David Foster should have been felling a burning tree into a Mona-shaped cauldron at a massive stadium on the Domain to open the Hobart 2020 Olympics. While the city’s unofficial but audacious bid for Olympic glory may be but a distant memory for some, it remains fresh in the mind of organiser Ben Waterworth.
What started as “a bit of a joke on a radio show” ended up garnering popular support. Venues were designed, a website set up, a social media campaign launched and political backing mustered. “We had numerous politicians expressing support for the bid, be it serious support or a bit of a fun passing comment,” Mr Waterworth said.
“Then-premier David Bartlett and then-Opposition leader Will Hodgman both spoke highly about it, although of course more in a passing offthe-cuff remark, but it was always great to hear them giving it vocal support.
“The community support was where it really was astounding to me, as we had thousands of supporters in Hobart who took it seriously and thousands of people around the world who supported the bid.
“We were invited to major international event conferences each year to sell the bid, featured on leading Games bids websites and had requests constantly for Hobart 2020 merchandise by Olympic collectors around the world.”
Mr Waterworth said he had a vision of the opening ceremony starting with a 20-year anniversary tribute to the role of young Nikki Webster at the Sydney Games.
“A small child would emerge from a can of Cascade beer holding a young Tassie devil and welcoming the world to the Hobart Olympics,” he said,
“There would then be recreations of iconic Tasmanian moments, such as Reggie winning Big Brother in 2003 and the street parades that followed, a plane landing on the
Brooker Highway and Myer burning down, but then rising from the ashes nearly an entire decade later.”
But there was a serious side to the best Australian Olympics since the Smiggin Holes 2010 Winter Olympic campaign, and that is Hobart’s status as a well-placed city to host a major multisport event, as the 2026 Commonwealth Games looks for a venue.
“What a perfect opportunity for the state government to put their hand up and put in a bid to showcase the beauty of Hobart and Tasmania to the world,” he said.
“There is also the recent tendency for the IOC to share the Games with multiple cities, opening up the door for perhaps the more realistic vision of Hobart and Tasmania to potentially host events through a co-bid with somewhere else in Australia such as Melbourne, or even a ‘smaller city bid’ (such as) say Adelaide.
“I think whether or not you are on the side of the fence of a serious or joke bid with the whole campaign and everything that came from it, I am a firm believer that Hobart is entirely capable of holding an event such as the Youth Olympics or even the Commonwealth Games.”
Tasmanian MP Madeleine Ogilvie was one of those who lent her support to the bid a decade ago and said that Hobart should continue to dream big, given the postponement of the Tokyo Games.
“Why don’t we look at assisting the Olympic movement by identifying places where athletes can come and safely have events?” she said.
“Tasmania is in a really good position to provide sports bubbles in the same way some states in the United States are doing. Being COVID-free with rigorous quarantine standards puts Tasmania at a strategic advantage.”