2023-05-27 18:02:38
BarcelonaThe people who were part of the bid to bring a Winter Olympics in 2030 occasionally still talk about everything that happened a year ago. “It was the great opportunity. Now we would have the Games”, they explain. But after overcoming a series of obstacles, bringing the different Catalan parties and the central government to an agreement, it would be the president of Aragon, Javier Lambán, who dynamited the project when all that was left was to stamp the signature and send the International Olympic Committee (IOC). “And they would have given it to us”, they explain to ARA. Easy, since a year later there is still no candidacy fighting to stay with the organization of the appointment.
The International Olympic Committee knows it has a problem with the Winter Games. If the Summer Games are a consolidated product that has already decided on all its venues until 2032 (Brisbane, in Australia), the 2030 winter date remains without a destination. The initial idea was to have it completed in 2022, but it will eventually wait until the congress in the summer of 2024, making it coincide with the Summer Games in Paris. All the options to host the 2030 Games have fallen through for various reasons, which shows that there is a deeper problem: the Winter Games are unattractive and raise doubts, unlike the Summer Games. For this reason, the IOC is considering introducing changes to manage to give it a new life. Changes such as the introduction of new disciplines now linked to the Summer Games, such as mountain biking.
At the end of 2022, a commission was created to study the future of the Winter Games, consulting with both athletes and scientists. With no firm 2030 bid, the IOC decided to use the moment to reflect on the model. At the first debate table, ideas were proposed such as demanding that future venues be able to demonstrate an average temperature of 0 degrees or less on the dates of the competition or choosing a group of venues that will always be the scene of the Games, rotating . The reason? The climate change. According to a study they commissioned, of all past Olympic Games venues, only half (11 out of 21) could host an event again in 2050, without having to rely solely on artificial snow and technology. Basically, places where you used to ski normally now can’t guarantee that it will be cold enough. The Pyrenees, in fact, are one of the regions that cannot guarantee this.
The IOC is also studying the possibility that some tests may not have to be directly related to snow and ice, at a time when the debate about sustainability is very present. The last Winter Games in China were, in fact, held with artificial snow. Artificial snow was first used at the Lake Placid Winter Games in the United States in 1980, and it has only grown since then. Those in Sochi in 2014, in Russia, already used 80% of artificial snow, and those in Pyeongchang in 2018, in South Korea, more than 90%, but China was the first to hold a Games in 2022 exclusively with artificial snow. According to a study published by London’s Loughborough University, the climate crisis will further reduce the number of places in the world that can host outdoor snow competitions naturally: by 2080 only six of the 19 places that previously had climate conditions favorable will be able to continue to host them. The IOC knows this, after seeing how the climate emergency has been one of the main arguments that have stopped candidatures.
In fact, the issue of snow was one of the arguments of those opposed to bringing the Winter Olympics to the Pyrenees, as well as the economic model for northern Catalonia. In the end, what would bring down the project would be the position of the Aragonese president Javier Lambán, who broke the agreement agreed between all the parties on which tests would go to the Catalan Pyrenees and which to the Aragonese. All attempts to change Lambán’s mind ended up failing and without a political agreement, the candidacy died. Despite the fact that for a few months the government of Catalonia tried to go ahead alone, the candidacy had already let the train pass and despite the fact that the date of 2030 remains without a destination, all the parties who got involved in the project admit that it is not will reactivate the proposal.
Other candidates, other problems
When the candidacy of the Pyrenees fell, the favorite became Sapporo, in Japan. Despite the fact that the Japanese had just hosted the last Summer Games, there was a feeling that they could do it as a prize, since the Tokyo Summer Games were without spectators due to the pandemic. But precisely a corruption scandal linked to the Tokyo 2020 Games stopped everything. If in 2022 more than 55% of the city’s population was in favor of asking to be part of it, after it was published that there had been cases of corruption at the Summer Games, support fell to 38%. In addition, almost eight out of ten Sapporo residents came out in favor of a referendum to approve the bid, a scenario the International Olympic Committee wants to avoid.
The US city of Salt Lake City, which also showed interest, has ultimately decided to pull out to avoid sponsor conflicts with the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. This candidacy could be presented for a hypothetical 2034 Games, but first the 2030 venue must be found, for which a Swedish proposal was reactivated, for the moment without much push, the one that had lost the race to host the event from 2026, when Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo will be the headquarters. The candidacy of Stockholm and the Are area, however, does not have much popular support, nor does it appear to have Vancouver, Canada. In recent weeks there has been talk of the possibility of a candidacy by the Swiss Olympic Committee.
Nor will the most surprising proposal of all, that of bringing the Winter Games to Saudi Arabia, arrive in time. The Saudi government, which has decided to make sports its new workhorse to modernize its country and improve the regime’s image, will host the 2029 Asian Winter Games in an all-artificial ski resort that it is building recently away from the border with Jordan. Despite being a country without natural snow, the Saudis claim that they can make the Games relatively sustainable by betting on technology. The 2029 event will be a testing ground to see if they will later submit a bid for the Winter Games. The Saudi proposal, however, seems to go against the ideas being discussed in the IOC’s internal commission about what the Games of the future should look like. The debate remains open. And the 2030 Games, without a destination.
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