Leaderboard

Please note that the statement came from a SOK member. They have always been very enthusiastic. The Swedish people less so. The one poll I have seen since February 8 had the support at 42 percent. That is before any serious debate has started. If you have a look at the aborted bids from various cities for the 2026 games support has a tendency to decrease rather than increase when people get to know the circumstances better. Hosting the final for European Song Contest next year would be much, much more popular. Latvia appears to be more interested. There government ministers are involved. Not in Sweden. No one disputes that and still the evaluation comittee found problems with accomodation. As for additional events I was talking about 2030. No one takes building a ski stadium in Stockholm seriously any longer. Especially not at the environmentally questionable site suggested for 2026. With at best two weeks of snow (and less and less as times goes by) every year a ski stadium in Stockholm would either not be used after hypothetical winter games or hideously expensive to provide with artificial snow. Falun already has a ski stadium. Biathlon most likely would be located in Östersund. My guess is that the pre-study will find that only someone completely detached from political and economical realities would continue. Of course that means that SOK will push on as enthusiastically as ever.

WHOA!! JUst looked at Latvia's population. DIdn't realize that they are under TWO million, more like 1.88 million citizens. Hmmm, Even with an abundance of indoor stadia -- which Stockholm also has, I wonder if they can sell enough tickets to fill whatever indoors events are alloted to them? Whereas Sweden has 10.6 million alone. (And even if you add the pops of the neighbors, just NOR-SWE-DEN alone would vastly outnumber EST-LAT-LITH.) So I think Riga could realistically only get Women's Ice Hockey and probably Short or Long-Track speed skating. Stockholm would want to hold on to all the other Indoor events where they will have stronger teams to field; and Stockholm would be better equipped to handle larger international crowds. Should a Stockholm-Sigulda (they have to go by the city names) Games bear fruit, wouldn't it be the supreme irony/parallel that in 1956, Stockholm played an outlier/add-on host for Equestrian to Melbourne's main set of sports; while come 2030, Sweden hosts the main body of sports but hands off one segment of sports to another country which has the equipment to stage them? I'd say funny-strange how history could repeat itself in a different configuration. And while Melbourne 1956 happened while the USSR had already invaded Hungary, let's hope that the Ukraine-Russia stand-off will still not be happening even by 2026. (Note, Mexico 1968 happened when friggin' USSR invaded Czechoslovakia. What is it with these Stalinists?