Stockholm has become the sixth city to bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics.
One day after the citizens of Munich and its potential partner cities voted against bidding, the Swedish Olympic Committee announced that the Swedish capital will join Almaty, Kazakhstan, Beijing, China, Cracow, Poland (with Slovakia), Oslo, Norway and Lviv, Ukraine in the race for the 2022 Games.
“The Swedish Olympic Committee (SOC) today put forward Stockholm to the International Olympic Committee as a possible host city for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in 2022,” reads an SOC statement. “If the ongoing investigations reveal that the project is viable, an application will be submitted to the IOC on March 14 2014. That will be deepened in January 2015 when the issue of government guarantees will also be dealt with.”
Stockholm’s announcement follows numerous failed attempts by cities such as Gothenburg, Falun and Östersund in the last quarter of the 20th century after a viability report published in October strongly suggested a Stockholm bid.
Having hosted the 1912 Olympic Games and the 1956 Equestrian Events (which because of Australian quarantine laws could not be staged in Melbourne), Stockholm would become the first city to stage both the Summer and Winter Olympics, if it was elected the 2022 host city by the 2015 IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur. Should Stockholm actually go through with its bit, the city must be considered a strongly rival of Oslo, the early favorite.
This story first appeared in the blog, The Sport Intern. The editor is Karl-Heinz Huba of Lorsch, Germany. He can be reached at ISMG@aol.com. The article is reprinted here with permission of Huba.