Women Deliver Krakow 2022 Winter Olympic Bid

A trio of women will present the Krakow applicant file to the IOC Thursday, a day before the deadline, the Polish bid tells Around the Rings.

At 2.30pm Lausanne time, the Kraków bid team is supposed to submit it’s dossier at IOC headquarters before holding a short media briefing.

Friday is the IOC deadline when the other four bid cities - Almaty, Beijing, Lviv and Oslo - are expected to deliver their files.

The Kraków delegation will include bid president Jagna Marczułajtis-Walczak, a member of the Polish Parliament and three-time Olympian.

The bid is handing over its file a day early because she has to be back in Poland for a parliamentary session on Friday.

Other Krakow bid officials making the trip to Lausanne are deputy mayor Magdalena Sroka and Iwona Łotysz, a representative of the Polish NOC. The Krakow team is the only one of the five cities with so many women in prominent roles.

"We are thrilled that our concept for the Olympic Winter Games 2022 in Kraków is now ready to be submitted to the IOC and shared with the Olympic Family," said Marczułajtis-Walczak, a fourth place finisher in snowboard at the Salt Lake City 2002 Games.

"We are headingto Lausanne with great excitement and joy."

She underlined the fact that Krakow’s bid had the full support of the Polish government.

"We are submitting the file along with all required guarantees for the applicant phase. The parliament voted for the bid almost unanimously, whilst the authorities of Kraków and Zakopane gave their full backing for the project," she added.

Krakow was the only one of the five bids which did not hold a briefing at the Sochi Olympics due to a family bereavement for Marczułajtis-Walczak.

ATR is told that Krakow will launch its bid website on Monday, which will include the first details of its 2022 concept. The bid dossier will be made public a week later.

Under the Krakow bid offer, alpine events would take place in the Jasna region of the Tatras Mountains, located in Slovakia, about 200 km from Krakow , which would host ice events along with Zakopane in southern Poland, closer to the Slovakia border. Zakopane was a bidder for the 2006 Winter Games.

Written by Mark Bisson

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