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June 25, 2019

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Home » Sports » Olympics

Italy wins 2026 Winter Games bid

Source: Agencies | 00:00 UTC+8 June 25, 2019 | Print Edition

Italy will host the 2026 Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, taking the Winter Games to the Alpine country for the second time in 20 years.

International Olympic Committee members voted yesterday for the long-favored Milan-Cortina bid over Stockholm-Are from Sweden that also included a bobsled track in Latvia.

Milan-Cortina’s jubilant delegation broke into chants of “Italia! Italia!” when the result was announced in Lausanne.

Italy last hosted in Turin in 2006, and the Alpine ski resort Cortina previously hosted the Winter Games in 1956.

Sweden’s spirited late campaign effort was in vain, including the mayor of Stockholm appealing to voters from the stage by singing a lyric from ABBA song “Dancing Queen.”

A sign of simmering Swedish frustration came minutes later when IOC board member Gunilla Lindberg pushed the limit of Olympic diplomacy ending her team’s 30-minute presentation.

Lindberg challenged her colleagues to reward a new kind of creative, cost-effective bid the IOC has said it wanted — “Or is it just talk?”

Instead, IOC members picked Italy despite a debt-hit economy which faces increasing European Union scrutiny.

“We submit with full confidence to your judgment,” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told voters during the session.

Both candidates would likely have failed to get this far in previous Olympic bidding contests.

The IOC has relaxed previously strict rules that demanded financial guarantees and government support earlier in the process.

It was an attempt to revive Winter Games bidding with just two candidates on the ballot paper for the second straight time, since Russia spent US$51 billion on venues and infrastructure for the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

Now, the IOC seeks to avoid costly new venues — and potential white elephants — while encouraging regions and multi-nation bids to share the load. Hence, Sweden teamed with Latvia, across the Baltic Sea, rather than build its ice sliding sports venue.

The 2026 contest meets the IOC President Thomas Bach’s long-stated wish to return to traditional heartlands for winter sports after major construction projects from 2014-2022 in Russia, South Korea, and China.

Milan and Stockholm were the only candidates left after four other cities — Swiss city Sion, Japan’s Sapporo, Austria’s Graz and 1988 host Calgary in Canada — had dropped out of the race with concerns over the size and cost of the event.

Sweden, a winter sports powerhouse which hosted the summer Olympics back in 1912, has now bid eight times unsuccessfully for the winter Games.

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