Winter Olympics are in trouble

EDITORIAL: WHAT OTHERS THINK When even Calgary says no, it’s a sign changes are needed

Calgary has already had more snow this winter than Beijing, host of the next Winter Olympics, will get all year. It has plenty of existing sport infrastructure and the winter culture to benefit from getting even more of it. And its residents have fond memories of hosting the 1988 Games.

So the International Olympic Committee is in trouble when even Calgary doesn’t want to see the event come to town.

Calgarians voted decisively (56 per cent) on Tuesday against hosting the 2026 Winter Olympics. The vote was a non-binding plebiscite but it almost certainly spells the end of the city’s bid.

IOC officials will now be crossing their fingers and toes hoping that the remaining candidates — Stockholm and a joint Italian bid from Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo — don’t get cold feet before the January deadline. But they should be doing more than that.

Calgary’s rejection isn’t just a blow to its bid committee and Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who pushed for it. It’s a blow to the Olympics themselves.

This is the latest warning sign that the IOC needs to change if it expects to continue in any sort of credible fashion as the list of cities that don’t want the Olympics grows far longer than cities that do.

To some degree, it knows this already. After all, the 2022 Winter Games are in Beijing and the surrounding mountain venues known to have “minimal annual snowfall.” For China that’s not considered a problem since it intends to spend a fortune making artificial snow with an environmentally questionable quantity of water and chemicals.

But who else really thinks that’s a good idea? And who can forget the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, where Russia reportedly spent a recordbreaking $51 billion (US) to show the world its best and then promptly invaded another country before the Paralympics had even started.

It’s little wonder that so many people who still love the idea of the Olympics have nothing but disdain for the IOC. The organization is on the fast track to a place where the only countries interested in hosting, particularly the less popular winter edition, are politically corrupt nations looking to use the global platform to further their own aims.

When the IOC lucked into two cities people can place on a world map in democratic countries bidding for a Summer Games, it rushed to change its rules to lock them both in. So it’s 2024 Paris and 2028 Los Angeles.

Four years ago, IOC president Thomas Bach introduced reforms to reduce the cost of bidding.

It capped the number of sports and athletes and allowed hosts to include a national favourite. And it opened the door for events to be held in other cities, which is why Calgary intended to put ski jumping in Whistler, rather than build an expensive potential white elephant in the city.

Those changes and others have made it easier for cities to consider a bid. But they haven’t done enough to keep nervous citizens from backing out later on, as we’ve just seen in Calgary.

“Sport in a positive sense really brings a country together,” says Canadian Olympic Committee president Tricia Smith. She’s not wrong about that.

At their best, the Olympics are a magical party that brings the world together, fosters national pride for the host nation and builds its amateur sport system. The uplifting stories of athletic success and near misses provide a welcome break from a steady diet of professional sport.

But at their worst, the Olympics are one big scandal — doping to judging — with a shockingly high security tab and billions in cost overruns.

Until the IOC changes that, cities like Calgary will continue to give it a pass.

An editorial from the Toronto Star