Calgary explores hosting Winter Games

Calgary is looking at hosting another Winter Olympics.

City council voted Monday to spend up to $5 million on an exploration committee to study a possible bid for the 2026 Winter Games.

Calgary was the host city of the 1988 Winter Olympics.

The Canadian Sport Tourism Authority says it will raise private funds to defray the cost of the exploration committee’s work.

“What council heard today is it’s time. It’s time to explore this bid in detail,” Mayor Naheed Nenshi said.

The IOC will name the 2026 host city in 2019.

CSTA chairman Doug Mitchell, a Calgary lawyer and husband of Alberta Lieutenant-Governor Lois Mitchell, says the organization has been working on a bid for 21⁄ years.

“I think we did a very thorough job to get to this stage,” Mitchell said. “Now that we’ve got approval from city council, we’ll look at additional financing for the first five million.

“We wouldn’t be doing this if we weren’t satisfied that the IOC is going to look at existing facilities and coming back to original cities that have supported and had the Olympics.” 1988 venues such as the Olympic Oval, Canmore Nordic Centre, and the sliding track at Canada Olympic Park still host international competition and serve as training centres of national teams. The ski jump at COP, however, is obsolete.

Calgary’s 1988 legacy and proximity to mountains has kept the city in conversations about future Winter Games bids.

Speculation about a Calgary bid accelerated when other cities lost interest in hosting. Quebec City said in May it was no longer considering a 2026 bid.

Toronto Mayor John Tory declared after last summer’s Pan American Games that the largest city in the country would not throw its hat in the ring for the 2024 Summer Games.

When cities dropped out and left only Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, competing for the 2022 Winter Games, the IOC adopted a series of reforms to make bidding for an Olympic Games less expensive.