Way Back When We Called Beijing 2022
Throwback Thursday takes a look back into Beijing's past, using our 15 years of blog archives as the source for a glance at the weird and wonderful of yesteryear.
The date: Feb 26, 2014: A year and five months before the host city 2022 Olympic Winter Games was selected, and our Managing Editor at the time, Steven Schwankert, made the prediction: You Heard It Here First: Beijing Will Host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games (read original prediction via QR code below).
The prediction, as we all know now, was spot on, and now here we are at the cusp of another Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing. The city was considered a long shot at the time -- and here's how Schwankert called it from our blog posted that fateful day:
The afterglow of the Winter Olympics is
already starting to fade (except for Canadians) and people are already
forgetting how to say "Sochi." Seahawks fans are still partying in
Seattle after their Super Bowl win, and in just another week from now,
curling will be a joke again until early February 2018 when Olympic
fever starts to grip us again ahead of the games in nearby Pyeongchang,
South Korea.
Beijingers will remember the Sochi games as opening
on what might be the only snowy day of the 2014 winter, and concluding
amidst alert-level air pollution. Not exactly the image the city wanted
to project as it bids to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, in
conjunction with nearby Zhangjiakou.
Nevertheless, we're going
out on a limb for the city we love: Beijing will win the bid and become
the first city ever to host both a summer and winter games.
Not
only will Beijing win these Olympics, Beijing must win these Olympics.
2008 went well for Beijing, but unlike Barcelona and Seoul, who
transformed their cities and their reputations by hosting the games,
Beijing's Olympic legacy has been a few new subway lines and a bunch of
disused sports stadiums. While the 2008 games were by most measures a
resounding success, Beijing still felt some shame when the air wasn't
exactly pristine. The '08 Summer Games made no long-term dent in
cleaning up the city's air, and we're sure the powers-that-be will not
make the same mistake twice.
Hosting the '22 games will give the
city the second chance it needs, and with the vast majority of the
citizenry now sensitized to the dangers of air pollution and officials
clamoring for long-term change, another shot at the Olympics is likely
to be just far away enough and provide just motivation enough to assure
that real change has a chance to occur and take root.
The Genting Resort Secret Garden, as imagined in 2014
Sure,
there will be no natural snow (and precious little local water to make
it with), but no natural precipitation didn't put a dent in the Sochi
games, and water importation for snow-making is a problem Beijing can
solve.
Perhaps best of all, the city has most of the
facilities already built and a national cash reserve to easily build
whatever else it needs.
While oddsmakers put Beijing slightly
behind Oslo and even with Almaty in the quest to host the Games, we below
handicap the field versus other potential host cities and tell you why
Beijing will win:
1. Stockholm, Sweden. This one is easy.
Stockholm has already dropped out in the face of public opposition to
hosting the Games (read more on this from The Globe and Mail via QR code below). One down...
2. Oslo, Norway. Norway had a big
hit with the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, but is having similar problems
to Stockholm, with a majority of Norwegians against hosting the Olympics
again, mostly due to concerns over the expenditure (according to insidethegames.biz, read more via QR code below). Oslo hosted the
1952 Winter Olympics.
3. Lviv, Ukraine. Yeah, uh, they're having a
few problems in Ukraine these days. Good for them if they continue with
the bid, but the International Olympic Committee (IOC) does not heart
political instability.
4. Almaty, Kazakhstan. God, Almaty – the
Games will not be in Kazakhstan. Sure, it would be a first to hold an
Olympics in a Central Asian country, and there's quite a bit of oil
money sloshing around to fund it, but as we saw with the 2000 Olympics,
which went to Sydney despite a strong bid from Beijing, the IOC will
choose an old favorite over a strong newcomer (otherwise why go back to
London?). Maybe someday, but not 2022.
5. Krakow, Poland. This is
the one city that could give Beijing a speed-skate for the money.
Poland co-hosted a successful Euro 2012 soccer tournament, but that
event, like the 2022 Winter Olympics, would be a cross-border shared
bid, with a village in Slovakia.
Forget pollution, forget snow.
Beijing has one big strike against it as a potential candidate city: the
2018 Games will take place in neighboring South Korea, and the 2020
Summer Games will be in Tokyo. It's not impossible, but that would put
three Olympic events in a row on a big time difference from the United
States. Why is that important? Because American broadcaster NBC pays for
about 20 percent of the Games by itself in exchange for television
rights (read more from The Washington Post via QR code below), which means they want American audiences, who will support
American advertisers, to be able to watch as many events as possible
live. And with a 12-hour difference between China and the US East Coast,
that makes for mighty tough live viewing.
Still, no nation has
demonstrated its ability to move heaven and earth for a mass athletic
event like China did in 2008. And let's face it: you've been humming
Beijing Huanying Ni (Beijing Welcomes You) on and off since August 2008
anyway. Beijing 2008 was a wonderful, transformational experience for
the city; Beijing/Zhangjiakou 2022 would do wonders for a capital in
need of a shot in the arm.
Photos: Daily Telegraph
advertisement