Sapporo Wins Winter Olympic Bid Backing

(ATR) The site of the first Winter Olympics in Asia aims for an encore in 2030.

Sapporo, host of the 1972 Winter Games, is now the official candidate from Japan for 2030. The Japanese Olympic Committee met January 29 to endorse Sapporo’s efforts to secure the Games. The capital city of Hokkaido Prefecture was the only city responding to a call for bids in Japan that ended in December.

Sapporo has been working on an Olympic bid for years. Initial plans to bid for 2026 were postponed due to the demands of the earthquake recovery underway in eastern Japan.

Earlier this month a delegation from Sapporo including Mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto visited IOC headquarters to meet with President Thomas Bach.

The formal backing of Sapporo for 2030 is the first among the three cities that have indicated interest in the next Winter Olympics to be selected by the IOC.

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee has endorsed Salt Lake City as its next winter bid candidate but it has not expressly indicated that 2030 is the desired time.

"We continue to follow the lead of the USOPC and stand ready, willing and able to move ahead at their direction," Salt Lake City bid leader Fraser Bullock tells Around the Rings.

Barcelona is trying to organize a bid that would use venues in the urban area and the mountains to the north in the Pyrenees. Organizers there have indicated that 2030 is the objective. The Spanish Olympic Committee has yet to make a decision on whether to support the proposal, a requirement by the IOC.

Under reforms to the bid process, the IOC has eliminated the head-to-head competition between rival bids that’s blamed for inflating the cost and complexity of bidding for the Olympics.

The IOC has established two permanent commissions, one for the summer Games, the other for the winter games, that will meet and consult with interested bidders on an open ended basis. The commissions are supposed to study the proposals and choose a finalist for the IOC Session to approve.

Octavian Morariu, IOC member in Romania, is the chair of the commission handling the Winter Olympics. He met with the delegation from Sapporo along with Bach at IOC headquartersearlier this month. With sites for summer and winter now chosen through 2028, 2030 is next on the list for the IOC to select.

No word from the IOC as to what’s next for the winter candidates selection process. Under the previous timetable followed by the IOC that selected host cities seven years ahead, 2030 would not be chosen until 2023. But under the new way of selecting hosts, the traditional timetables are being abandoned.

The press release from the JOC indicates that it will inform the IOC of its support for Sapporo "within days". But there is no mention of a timetable for other significant steps that will be taken to advance candidacy.

"The JOC will continue to communicate closely with Sapporo City to promote the spirit of sport and the Olympic movement in Japan," concludes the brief statement from the JOC.

Sapporo, population just under 2 million, will play a role in the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. The Sapporo Dome will be the site of preliminary matches in the men’s and women’s football tournament.

More controversially, the IOC in September insisted that the marathon and race walking events scheduled for Tokyo be moved to Sapporo as a safety measure against the summer heat of Tokyo.

Speaking following the meeting between the IOC and Sapporo, Bach said the cooperation and support of the city for this sudden change is a positive for the Winter Olympic bid

"And about the organizational skills, there can also be no doubt that Sapporo is giving evidence to this by organizing the Olympic marathon and the race walks in an extraordinary way with a very efficient and very professional approach, so this gives us all the confidence for a really great success of these Olympic races in 2020, but also makes us very, very confident then with regard to the organization of an Olympic Winter Games," Bach said.

Reported by Ed Hula.