(ATR) Sapporo’s final decision on which Winter Games to bid on will likely be determined by what the public wants, even if it isn't through a referendum.
Around the Rings is told by a Sapporo official that the city’s recent discussions with the Japanese Olympic Committee about potentially pursuing 2030 rather than 2026 is the result of opinion polls that showed people thought it might be better to bid for the 2030 Games. One of the polls was conducted by local media and the other by the Sapporo chamber of commerce.
Sapporo will conduct a survey of its own to gauge public interest in a 2026 bid, an effort that is expected to leave city officials with little time to then make a decision before the end of the dialogue stage for the 2026 bidding process in October. At that point, the IOC will be choosing cities for the candidature stage, the final phase of the process. The candidature phase will culminate with the winner being decided at the IOC Session in Milan, Italy in September 2019.
The tight timeline is the reason the city needs to talk with JOC and other stakeholders "intensively", according to the official.
Sapporo Mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto and Tsunekazu Takeda, an IOC member and head of the JOC, met Monday in Tokyo. They told reporters they discussed the possibility of dropping the 2026 bid in favor of 2030, but said no decision has been made.
Both Akimoto and Takeda agreed that the status of a planned high-speed rail line could play into the bid being moved back four years. The mayor, according to the AP, says the train would not be ready for 2026 but would likely be running by 2030.
Sapporo’s director general for sport Toshiya Ishikawa told ATR in February that the 1972 Winter Games host city was amenable to hosting in either 2026 or 2030. He also admitted that convincing the IOC to award the Winter Olympics to a third straight Asian city would be a tough sell. Beijing is hosting in 2022 following on from PyeongChang earlier this year.
However, Sapporo is considered by many as the IOC’s security blanket in the 2026 race should the potential bids in Europe and Calgary all fail to materialize. Besides Calgary and Sapporo, the other candidates are Graz, Austria; Stockholm, Sweden; Sion, Switzerland; Cortina d"Ampezzo, Milan and Turin, Italy and Erzurum, Turkey.
The IOC has also not ruled out awarding 2026 and 2030 together, similar to the decision last year to give 2024 to Paris and 2028 to Los Angeles.
Salt Lake City, Denver and Reno-Tahoe are all interested U.S. bidders for 2030 along with Lillehammer, Norway.
Written by Gerard Farek
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