IOC VP: 2022 Winter Olympic Race Will Not Re-Open

(ATR) IOC vice president Craig Reedie says the trouble-hit 2022 bid race should not be re-opened to implement any Olympic Agenda 2020 changes.

Despite Oslo’s demise and the collapse of bids from a handful of European countries over the past year, Reedie told the Bid to Win conference in London Tuesday that it would not be fair to re-run the 2022 race. IOC president Thomas Bach made similar comments soon after the Norwegian government axed the bid.

"I think it’s actually quite difficult if you have a process that asks national Olympic committees to bid, if you ask cities to bid, if you go through the whole process and you suddenly change the process half the way through," he said, "because the evaluation commission will be heading for Almaty and Beijing in probably January or February, as they should as it's a Winter Games."

"So I think it’s quite difficult to turn around to your two bidders who have done everything correctly and say, ‘I’m sorry, but we’d quite like to have other countries in here so we’ll change the rules.’"

Oslo withdrew from the 2022 Winter Olympics contest earlier this month following lack of government support. Munich, Lviv, Krakow and Stockholm had earlier dropped out of the race, leaving Almaty, Kazakhstan and Beijing as the only two candidates.

Now the spotlight is on the IOC’s bidding processes, which are being heavily scrutinized in the Agenda 2020 project. Recommendations will be put to a vote at the IOC’s Extraordinary Session in Monaco in December.

Reedie also flatly denied there were any "demands" made by the IOC to bidding cities, and said the difference between organizing committee budgets and non-organizing committee budgets should be better understood.

"Many constantly criticized Sochi for spending $50 billion. I don’t know where that figure came from, but at no time did the IOC invite Sochi to make that investment," Reedie said.

Reedie also reiterated the IOC’s stance that there won’t be any clash between the 2022 Winter Olympic and the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

The football showpiece is usually held in the northern hemisphere summer months, but a FIFA task force is currently investigating whether to move the 2022 edition due to the searing temperatures in the Gulf nation.

A move to the winter months has been suggested, though that might overlap with the Winter Olympics.Reedie told reporters that the two events would not intersect.

"Thomas Bach and president [Sepp] Blatter have met, and I understand that there is a will not to have that clash," he said.

"But we are restricted pretty much in winter sports to doing it when winter sports conditions are absolutely right and that’s February 2022, and with a bit of luck, FIFA will be able to work around that."

The World Anti-Doping Agency president also reacted to recent comments from European Club Association chairman Umberto Gandini that the Winter Games were not as important as the World Cup.

"You won’t be surprised if I say I disagree with him. You’ve only got to look at the interest in the last Winter Games in Sochi; the number of hours covered which was almost getting to Summer Olympic quantities," he said.

"So there is huge interest in the Winter Games and that will continue," he added. "At the moment it’s not a row. It’s a negotiation to avoid a clash of sporting dates, and I am sure that will happen."

Reported by Christian Radnedge

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