(ATR) The Swedish National Olympic Committee’s (SOK) new president says he is putting Stockholm 2026 at the top of his agenda.
The SOK announced Monday that Mats Årjes, the president of the national skiing federation, won a tight 23-19 vote over SOK vice president Per Palmström to replace Hans Vestberg, who decided to step down after only two years.
Vestberg told Swedish Radio that his short tenure was due to his taking a new job in the United States that would prevent him from being able to "give everything" to his duties as SOK president.
Årjes will be the seventh SOK president since the founding of the organization in 1913.
"The most exciting birthday of my life," said about becoming president on his 51st birthday.
"I’m honored to be chosen and will work hard to continue to develop SOC," said the new president in a statement.
Årjes is the CEO of Skistar, the company which runs the alpine facilities in Åre, the proposed alpine skiing venue for Stockholm’s 2026 bid.
The new president will look to keep up the momentum for the bid, especially among the politicians.
Bid CEO Richard Brisius admitted to Around the Rings in February that there is still work to be done but said he feels the pace of the new bidding process works well for both the IOC and the Stockholm bid.
"It is important to get all the key stakeholders with us," he said. "And we have big respect for the politicians and they are smart and they understand now how good this is and then we have the corporate world with us and sports world with us but we want to walk as much as in the same pace, everyone together. So this dialogue stage suits us perfectly."
The IOC will determine in October which of the seven competing bids will move on from the dialogue to the candidature phase of the process. The winning bid will be chosen in September 2019 at the IOC Session in Milan, Italy.
Written by Gerard Farek
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