Almaty Sends Revised Winter Olympic Plan to IOC

(ATR) Almaty 2022 tells Around the Rings it has made eight changes to the Games concept scrutinised by IOC inspectors to be "even more efficient and affordable".

The IOC 2022 Evaluation Commission assessed every aspect of the Kazakh bid’s Olympic plans during its visit last month and approved a series of changes to slash costs in line with efficiencies demanded by Agenda 2020 reforms.

Almaty bid officials were set a March 4 deadline to submit additional information, clarifications about its concept and guarantees to strengthen its Winter Olympic offering.

It's a new phase in the Olympic bidding process, part of the IOC's attempts to drive down costs under Agenda 2020 reforms.

Almaty's "optimizations" were sent to the IOC before Wednesday’s deadline.

A bid spokeswoman told ATR the eight changes included relocating all Alpine skiing disciplines to an existing location - Almatau Mountain - for cost and long-term legacy reasons.

The Shymbulak resort and Tau Park Alpine has been scrapped from the concept "to better optimize Almaty’s long-term sports legacy" Upgtrading Shymbulak to stage downhill and Super G events was estimated at $100 million.

The cross and slopestyle events for freestyle ski and snowboard, as well as parallel slalom and giant slalom for snowboard and freestyle, have been relocated to the existing Ak Bulak Resort "to enhance long-term sustainability for these sports and this venue".

Snowboard and freestyle events will no longer take place at Tau Park.

Paralympic ice sledge hockey is moved from the Almaty Olympic Arena to the existing Baluan Sholak venue in the city centre "to increase the athlete’s experience and improve sustainability".

The Medeu Athlete Village capacity has been downsized from 1,000 to 350 beds.

Other changes to Almaty’ss bid include shelving of the Kok Zhailau media accommodation plan and Medeu Mountain Media Sub Centre to save costs.

"Based on our excellent IOC Evaluation Commission visit, and the new flexibility afforded by Agenda 2020, we optimized our Games concept in a way that made our existing, excellent plan even better," Almaty bid vice chairman Andrey Kryukov said.

"This will create greater value for our legacy, greater benefit for the Olympic Movement and, most of all, it adds even more comfort and convenience to the athletes’ experience at the Almaty 2022 Winter Games."

The IOC inspection team led by Russian NOC president Alexander Zhukov visits Beijing March 24-28.

The IOC’s evaluation report on Almaty and Beijing, the only two candidate cities for the 2022 Games, will be made public on June 1.

The vote on the host city takes place at the IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur on July 31.

Reported by Mark Bisson

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