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U.S. Olympic Committee leaning more toward 2030 Winter Games bid

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December 12, 2017, 9:50 am
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Beaver Creek’s annual Birds of Prey downhill drew a big crowd on Saturday, Dec. 2 (David O. Williams photo).

Increasingly, it’s looking like the United State will go nearly three decades — and possibly even longer — between Winter Olympic Games hosted on American snow.

In a conference call with reporters on Friday, United States Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun said the Colorado Springs-based organization is leaning more toward a bid for the 2030 Winter Games as opposed to 2026. After Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February, Beijing hosts the next winter Olympics in 2022 — becoming the first city to ever host both Winter and Summit Olympic Games (2008).

“We’re very interested in bringing the [Winter] Games back to the U.S.,” Blackmun said Friday. “There are some significant challenges associated with doing that in 2026, so in all candor we’re leaning more in the 2030 direction. But we haven’t made any formal decisions.”

While Blackmun didn’t specify, a couple of the challenges associated with a 2026 bid by Denver or any other U.S. city or state is that the deadline is March 31, and Los Angeles will host the 2028 Summer Olympics, giving it marketing supremacy over the Winter Games two years earlier.

“We have encouraged the three cities from the U.S. that are interested in potentially hosting – Reno-Tahoe, Salt Lake City and Denver – to be in a dialogue with the [International Olympic Committee], and that is happening,” Blackmun said. “So, we’re very excited about the prospects of hosting, but nothing tangible to report in the way of timing.”

Salt Lake City, Utah hosted the last Winter Games held in the U.S. in 2002, and Denver remains the only city to ever reject the Olympics after landing the 1976 Games from the IOC only to have voters later reject funding them after an anti-Olympic movement spearheaded by then state legislator and later Gov. Dick Lamm. Beaver Creek was planned and envisioned as an Olympic venue for those Games and now hosts annual World Cup ski races.

Lamm has since said he wouldn’t be opposed to the Olympics in Colorado, as long as they are cost-effective and come with a fix for the Interstate 70 bottleneck between the Front Range and the mountains.

The $50-billion price tag of the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 scared off so many bidders for the 2022 Games that the IOC awarded them to China but also adopted the Olympic Agenda 2020 plan to encourage downsizing, reusing venues and even multi-city bids.

Asked about a U.S. bid for either 2026 or 2030 that could combine two of the potential bid cities or possibly even three, Blackmun said that’s not really on the USOC radar.

“That is not a thought at this point,” Blackmun said. “We have not discussed that, although the IOC has been pretty clear that it is very open-minded about having multiple cities host. It’s a little bit different thing to have multiple cities from one country competing to host, and that’s not something we’ve talked with them about.”

 

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David O. Williams

Managing Editor at RealVail
David O. Williams is the editor and co-founder of RealVail.com and has had his awarding-winning work (see About Us) published in more than 75 newspapers and magazines around the world, including 5280 Magazine, American Way Magazine (American Airlines), the Anchorage Daily News (Alaska), the Anchorage Daily Press (Alaska), Aspen Daily News, Aspen Journalism, the Aspen Times, Beaver Creek Magazine, the Boulder Daily Camera, the Casper Star Tribune (Wyoming), the Chicago Tribune, Colorado Central Magazine, the Colorado Independent (formerly Colorado Confidential), Colorado Newsline, Colorado Politics (formerly the Colorado Statesman), Colorado Public News, the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Colorado Springs Independent, the Colorado Statesman (now Colorado Politics), the Colorado Times Recorder, the Cortez Journal, the Craig Daily Press, the Curry Coastal Pilot (Oregon), the Daily Trail (Vail), the Del Norte Triplicate (California), the Denver Daily News, the Denver Gazette, the Denver Post, the Durango Herald, the Eagle Valley Enterprise, the Eastside Journal (Bellevue, Washington), ESPN.com, Explore Big Sky (Mont.), the Fort Morgan Times (Colorado), the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, the Greeley Tribune, the Huffington Post, the King County Journal (Seattle, Washington), the Kingman Daily Miner (Arizona), KUNC.org (northern Colorado), LA Weekly, the Las Vegas Sun, the Leadville Herald-Democrat, the London Daily Mirror, the Moab Times Independent (Utah), the Montgomery Journal (Maryland), the Montrose Daily Press, The New York Times, the Parent’s Handbook, Peaks Magazine (now Epic Life), People Magazine, Powder Magazine, the Pueblo Chieftain, PT Magazine, the Rio Blanco Herald Times (Colorado), Rocky Mountain Golf Magazine, the Rocky Mountain News, RouteFifty.com (formerly Government Executive State and Local), the Salt Lake Tribune, SKI Magazine, Ski Area Management, SKIING Magazine, the Sky-Hi News, the Steamboat Pilot & Today, the Sterling Journal Advocate (Colorado), the Summit Daily News, United Hemispheres (United Airlines), Vail/Beaver Creek Magazine, Vail en Español, Vail Health Magazine, Vail Valley Magazine, the Vail Daily, the Vail Trail, Westword (Denver), Writers on the Range and the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. Williams is also the founder, publisher and editor of RealVail.com and RockyMountainPost.com.