Games proponents don’t expect to see local bid for 2030 event

After Calgary voters rejected a bid for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Tuesday night’s plebiscite, proponents of hosting the Games say it’s unlikely the city will consider another bid for 2030.

However, supporters say they do see the city hosting another Winter Games in the future, if there’s community support behind it.

Scott Hutcheson, the chair of Calgary’s bid corporation, said he doesn’t think the city should immediately shift its focus to pursuing the 2030 Winter Games.

“I don’t think it’s 2030,” Hutcheson said. “I think you’ve got to put your pencil down for seven years. You don’t put it down for three years. Use the work later, but you can’t put a city through this every four years. My view would be let it go, accept the result, move on and come back with a bid maybe in seven years.”

Out of 304,774 ballots cast, 171,750 or 56.4 per cent were against Calgary hosting the 2026 Olympics, with 132,832 voting in favour. City council must still formally vote to end the bid, but senior governments have said their financial support of the Games was contingent on the endorsement of Calgarians in a plebiscite.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi said Wednesday that while “things may change,” it would be a “bad idea” for Calgary to bid on the Games in 2030.

“Reason No. 1 is there’s geopolitical reasons where it would probably be pretty unlikely that Canada would be successful in a bid for that particular Games. … The second reason is, look, this was not a rushed process. We did this over two years together … and this was the result,” he said.

“I cannot imagine what would be different four years from now. So if Calgarians have spoken in this way for 2026, and we respect that decision, why would it be any different four years from now?”

Calgary 2026 CEO Mary Moran noted there are already strong candidates for the 2030 Winter Games.

“The competitive set’s pretty tough for 2030,” Moran said Tuesday night after the vote results were announced. “We know that. We know that there’s seven cities that are interested in it already and so I wanted to be leaders in the Agenda 2020 and the new norms of the Games, and I thought we were a perfect city for it, so it’s unfortunate.”

But Canadian Olympic Committee president Tricia Smith said she suspects “we will see another bid from Canada.”

“Sport in a positive sense really brings a country together,” Smith said Wednesday. “I think it’s just a part of us, our humanity.”

My view would be let it go, accept the result, move on and come back with a bid maybe in seven years.

Murray Sigler, CEO of Sport Calgary, said the non-profit society believes another bid would be possible at a later date.

“I wouldn’t see it as a realistic prospect for the very near future, but the future’s a long time, and Calgary is an Olympic city, we are a sport city,” he said Wednesday.

Calgary needs time to regroup and to absorb the lessons from the current experience, Sigler added.

“Sport’s ingrained in our city, and it is regardless of the outcome last night,” Sigler said. “Sport goes to the fabric of this city. There’s 380,000 Calgarians involved in organized sport in one way or the other. It touches a lot of lives … I’d be surprised if at a later date, Calgary wasn’t again hosting an Olympic Games, with broad community support.”