Warm fuzzies nonsense from IOC boss

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach was almost insultingly patronising during his whistlestop visit to New Zealand last week.

Bach suggested New Zealand, ‘‘a great sports country’’, should be able to host an Olympic Games and challenged us to mount a bid.

Even New Zealand Olympic Committee president Mike Stanley, seated next to him, was surprised and said he doubted we would want to go down that path.

What would Bach say if he popped into Honiara, the Solomon Islands capital? Would he suggest that country, too, could host an Olympics, just to make his hosts feel warm and fuzzy?

When Montreal hosted the 1976 Olympics, the city incurred a debt of NZ$1.6 billion ($12 billion in today’s terms). It finally cleared that debt only a few years ago.

When Athens hosted the 2004 Olympics, it was left with a debt of about $20 billion. Greece’s current catastrophic financial position is partly because of that debt.

Rio de Janeiro, next year’s Olympics host, will be seeking $16 billion from taxpayers to help cover costs.

Bach knows how financially crippling an Olympics can be – security alone for the 2012 London Olympics was $2 billion.

The security in London included 13,000 police, 17,000 members of the armed forces, 10,000 private security staff, and naval and air assets including surface to air missiles.

The idea of New Zealand countenancing all that, even without the massive spending required for stadiums and transport, is preposterous.

It reminds me of when Mike Moore was Minister for Sport in the late 1980s and formed a task force that included his mate, businessman Bob Jones, to investigate if it was feasible for New Zealand to host a winter Olympics.

The group concluded the concept was feasible.

Amazed, I asked Jones if he could really imagine New Zealand hosting a winter Olympics. ‘‘We only said it was feasible, not that it would happen,’’ he replied.

In the spirit of Bach, Martin Snedden, who headed the 2011 Rugby World Cup organising team, has suggested New Zealand is capable of jointly hosting a Football World Cup. This idea is mind boggling. However, Russia is hosting the 2018 tournament, and Qatar the 2022 event.

Snedden suggested New Zealand and Australia might cohost, but Australia belongs to a different confederation and is ineligible to host in 2026 or 2030.

Mercifully the Snedden’s idea won’t need to be discussed seriously for at least another decade.

It will be a long time before New Zealand hosts any major sports event.

The Rugby World Cup will be in Japan in 2019, probably South Africa in 2023 and Europe in 2027. A United States/Canada bid and one from Australia would have priority over New Zealand, which means we’d be looking at about 2043 at the earliest.

New Zealand would be better targeting the Commonwealth Games, assuming that festival continues in the long term.

A regional – rather than city – bid would be feasible. Even then, it will be a while away.

The Commonwealth Games will be on the Gold Coast in 2018, and Durban seems a racing certainty to host in 2022. The games would go to the northern hemisphere in 2026, so New Zealand would be looking at 2030 at the earliest.