zekekelso

That's right. All the other bids have hockey and other ice events being played on frozen ponds. Idiot.

The Olymics have been in Scandinavia once in the past 60 years. And people won't do a lot of traveling back and forth.... any more than they do to distant SOG locations.

SOGs have them all the time. What's the distance between Tallinn and Moscow? Beijing to Hong Kong? Rio to Salvador? And it does without saying that Sweden has one time zone, so it's nothing like placing them 3 time zones apart. Why are longer distance (sometimes much longer distances) not "too far" for SOGs?

Those non-winter IOC voters have zero problem putting events like sailing "ridiculous distances" away. I'm continually amazed at the posters here who are 100% certain IOC voters won't do something... even if they've done similar things many times in the past. If the IOC voters don't want to to go Stockholm, they can blame the distance. If they do, the distance won't be a problem at all.

So to prove the games aren't a "rich, white man's toy" they gave them to Putin, assuming he would spend tens of billions on unneeded vunues and development. Right. The insistence on "compact" games is one of those arbitrary rules the IOC puts in place that greatly drives up costs and limits the number of possible hosts. Never listen to what IOC members say.... watch what they do. When they get rid of compactness, that's when you know they actually mean what they say about cost worries and wanted to make the games more universal.

Let's face it.... the IOC is full of corrupt weaseals. There requirements are meglomanicial. Munich's rejection won't be enough to change the IOC. But if they are the first with more to come...

But he's got a great excuse... he was really, really drunk at the time. Other breaking news... Rob Ford's popularity continues to go up(!) with each new bit of news. Canada... what a country!

Only if they propose hosting beach volleyball in St. Peter's Square.

What has changed in the IOC over the past 20 years? They soundy rejected a decent Cape Town bid for 2004. What's different now that would cause them to reject great candidates in Europe in favor of just any African bid?

Given the transportation issues, I wouldn't be surprised if Dodger stadium is excluded from the plan. If they did want to use it, about the only think I could picture there is rugby. There's a push to keep football all in the same time zone. So probably all in California (maybe Phoenix, which is in LA's time zone in summer.) Curious to see if they use the Rose Bowl (i.e. do they think they can sell that many tickets) or would they use more reasonablly sized stadiums.

Only Barron could fail to see the difference between a concert, and beach volleyball. Manhattan Beach has serious transportation problems. But so does any beach location in LA. I'm just saying if you want it on the beach, MB is the obvious choice.

Manhattan Beach has hosted volleyball tournaments for 50 years. It's practically the birthplace of the sport. If they choose a beach location, it's the obvious choice. The sightlines at Dodger Stadium don't work for beach volleyball... and the traffic would be problematic. Zero reason to put it there.

China - at least as much as the United States - is used to getting it's way. There was outrage when Bejing wasn't selected for 2000. Don't expect China to put out a "placeholder" bid for 2022. Side note - Harbin is cold. I know the Winter games are supposed to be cold, but Harbin is really, really cold. Since China has to build all the infrastructure from scratch anyway, there's gotta be a better choice.

That's correct... they came in 3rd. Not first, 3rd. And they almost came in last. Like new-frontier Istanbul, they had to win a runoff to get out of the first round. Sure, Durban (or Cape Town 2024) could win. But some people here vastly overestimate the IOC's eagerness to actually vote for new-frontier towns. Based on past history, a city would be crazy to sit out because they are convinced an RSA bid is an automatic winner.

Don't assume a credible Druban bid automatically wins.

Wait, other person wanting to put the games in Louisiana? It's like that BR guy left a cancer behind.

Fun to think about. But while Glencoe may have the vertical drop, but lacks (badly!) everything else you would need - difficulty, snow, access, infrastructure, etc. We are talking about a place with only tow-ropes to the top of the "mountain".

Tennis = few athletes + lots of tickets to sell + good TV ratings + often existing venue. Exactly the kind of thing the Olympics want. I don't see tennis (or golf for that matter) going anywhere.

You could put together a bid from Stockholm and even LA. But a WOG in London would be tough.

Sounds good to me. I think Munich will be hard to beat. IF they bid. if not, it's a wide open field. As an Olympic tourist, I'll probably be skipping Pyeongchang. But I'd love to go to Poland.

They won't get rid of football - it's worth far too much money. But they could keep it and add the beach version (similar to volleyball). None of the 8-9 sports that were seriously considered are worth adding. Unless something better comes along (maybe beach football) the IOC should leave well enough alone.

Agreed. But at least wrestling has tradition going for it. If it hadn't always been an Olympic sport, it would have no chance of being added. Personally, I wouldn't add any new sports to the Olympics now. If you don't have a "beach volleyball" don't add anything. If the IOC wants to drop a sport like wrestling to force them to reform, then let them back in that seems like a good route to take.

So, it's an old sport nobody cares much about.Meh.

Special boxing only version of the above: