yoshi

I guess I could ask Gianni nicely if he wants to run the next vote...

The voters in the city election were: @Palette86 @TorchbearerSydney @Anthony @cfm Jeremie @Olympian1010 @Scotguy II @Sir Rols @fatixxx @ulu @AustralianFan @Qss212 @JDCLauron @Bear @PikyoK . I might @ some others tomorrow

I DECLARE CHRISTMAS 2022...OPEN! The ultimate 80s song there, with everyone who was anyone, and Phil Collins, asking a question which can only be answered with "we do now, because the logo comp is here!". Yes, here we go again, because well, it's tradition, and we've just spent a week deciding which cities to use - it's THE 16TH ANNUAL GAMESBIDS OLYMPIC LOGO COMPETITION! Amazingly, last year we did actually get entries despite the board being about as alive as the premiership of Liz Truss. JDCLauron and Glacib took our titles in January, and now we are here to see who will be their successors - if they don't retain them of course. The format is traditional - winter, summer, one of each - and though I'd normally do a big reveal, surprising you with our cities, you already know them, because you voted for them! Even so, we should still present them properly. Here goes: SUMMER 2036: NAIROBI, KENYA In the words of the great philosopher Shakira, it's time for Africa! In the words of comp guru and wombat Sir Rols, we haven't really "done" Africa since Durban. And since that's so long ago I didn't know we had ever done that, you surely made the right choice in picking the Kenyan capital. It doesn't hurt that Kenya is one of the world's leading athletics nations, and Nairobi one of Africa's (and the world's) fastest growing cities, in one of Africa's great sporting nations. One day, hopefully, the Olympic flame will finally burn in Africa. If Nairobi is where it goes, how will you design what'd be one of the most significant Olympics in history? WINTER 2034: REYKJAVIK, ICELAND What is Iceland? A magical wonderland of elves & sagas, a country that will surely (surely?) eventually win Eurovision, a cheap supermarket*, the football team indirectly responsible for England winning the World Cup**, a flight-destroying volcano, or the holder of a seeming monopoly on the world's cool music supply? All of them, but it's also the most appropriate place you could ever have for a winter Olympics - which must be why you voted to make that (sorta) happen. Despite literally being named for it, I don't recall seeing Icelandic success at the winter games - but that'd change if they host it all. How would you design the most northerly Olympics there could ever be? * That's a VERY British reference. I'll try not to make many more ** Maybe. This probably won't age well. Anyway, RULES AND STUFF: We are, as ever, after logos that encompass the overall feel of the city and local influences that can be tied into a design concept. How can any of these cities articulate graphically what they could bring to future Olympics hosting? What flavour will they bring to the games? Will it inspire the IOC to rediscover its love of new frontiers and give Africa its chance? Rio's map still has a big hole in it... The logos should be presented as full colour designs on white background. If you like, however, they can also be presented in black and white or utilised in forms like street banners, t-shirts, apps, vehicles, pins etc. For voting purposes, the main (colour) logo will be used on the polls, & extra stuff is not obligatory, but any extra material you produce may help you “sell” your design better to the wider GamesBids voting membership.  These logos are for the cities as they HOST the games. So you CAN use the rings, and don't need to include the words “Candidate City, Olympic Games 2036” or whatever the IOC want this week. Please post your preliminary submissions on this thread. If you want to hold anything back to be presented as a “surprise” when voting starts you can contact me or Rols via PM and I'll tell you where you can send the extra material. However, it would be nice to see as many on-thread submissions as possible for people to chew over in-thread, & to try & get the old buzz back. We can hope, right? You can submit logos for either or both cities. However, you cannot enter more than one logo for the same city (see below). So entering one logo for each is fine, but two logos for Glasgow Nairobi, say, is not fine. You are able, encouraged even, to enter both 'sides' of the comp. Feel free to post as many logo designs as you like, & to ask for feedback from our famously discerning electorate. If you really can't decide between your own designs for a city, feel free to start a poll (or to ask for one to be started). When the time comes for voting, however, you will be asked to settle on a maximum of ONLY ONE official logo per city as your official entry. The format depends on the numbers. Most likely, it will be the traditional exhausting exhaustive ballot preferred by the IOC, but if numbers fit & opinion ok, we may have the World Cup-style tournament system. Whatever happens, the winter & summer 'halves' will be entirely separate, there will be two winners in the Olympic comp tradition. The competition is open to all members of GamesBids, or to any new legitimate members who join before the end of the submission period. I, with consultation, will rule on the legitimacy of new members. As you would expect, I will rule on any disputes - always aiming to be as fair as possible in the process. As always, just remember, this is all meant to be fun. Olympic spirit, remember?. Hopefully this will spark up some action on the board. I'll be dipping in, keeping a close eye on things, but otherwise will try and keep my green yoshi-paws off until the polling stages. The deadline for submissions is 1pm London time (that is, midnight in Sydney, as per tradition) on NEW YEAR'S EVE, 31 DECEMBER 2022. Thus, GB will begin the new year (no Olympics this time) 2023 with the voting. Just one extra thing, there is something of a tradition of that being extended, but I'm hoping not to have to do that this year as we already have 14 members sufficiently interested to vote in the city election, and hopefully at least some of you will submit logos within the month. I will @ all those voters (all of you) in the next post. And this is just to alert @Rob. Rob to the existence of the new comp in the hope that he'll do his traditional bit of putting up links to various free design programs etc for the benefit of those who want to take part but may not have the facility at the moment, and to alert @GBModerator Rob to the fact the comp is back! All that is left to say is thank you Rols once again, and to all participants for having the guts to put your logos up for the annual GamesBids dissection, & may the best logos win - GOOD LUCK!

The vote is now CLOSED, no new votes can be cast, and after an extremely impressive turnout of 14 voters, the results are as follows: Summer: Amsterdam: 3. Auckland: 3. Birmingham: 0. Nairobi: 6. Seoul: 2. Winter: Barcelona: 2. Canberra: 1. Reykjavik: 6. Santiago: 3. Trojena: 2. Therefore, the International Olympic Committee has the honour of announcing that the cities for the 16th Annual Gamesbids Olympic Logo Competition are: For summer 2036, Nairobi, Kenya. And for winter 2034, Reykjavik, Iceland. The competition thread will open either later today or tomorrow. I hope to see logos from all voters

Last call for votes, with just under 22 hours left to make your voice heard

I don't remember Reykjavik being a comp city before... @Sir Rols?

Just another bump, I'll probably do one more on Wednesday when it's 24-ish hours to go - but until then, if you haven't already - vote

Commentator on the match there the other day said Uruguay want it - all of it - for the 2030 bid. Maybe it really will be the first truly nomadic stadium, could be at least one good thing come out of this tournament. Also yeah that was an amazing win by Japan @Palette86 - I had Germany down as top 3 favourite, they're usually at their best when nobody is talking about them...

As I was saying before we were interrupted, there's now just under a week left to vote if you want your voice to count

It seems like most sports administrators lose the plot eventually, but I doubt there's ever been one quite as spectacular as that He clearly thinks he's the Messiah and there's nobody telling him he's a very naughty boy...

IT'S DEMOCRACY TIME! Yes, don't panic, this is just the preview of our latest Olympic logo competition. Traditionally, you get a winter & summer city dumped on you by me, but this time, the competition's most important aspect is up & down to YOU! For the first time ever, the cities we use will be determined by vote, in the closest thing the Olympics have had to a normal bidding process since 2013. It's not a free-for-all, there's a shortlist, and the rest of this post is their names, a picture, and a Wikipedia link to each city. The summer shortlist is at the top, the winter cities are below. They are separate polls. Because democracy only ever goes so far in global sport, this will run as a British election - one vote per person, most votes wins, simples. It's not the comp, just selecting the cities. DO NOT SUBMIT ANY LOGOS HERE. But do feel free to support your favourite. Like all the best IOC shortlists, we got 5 candidates for each one, Here they are, the summer cities: ----------------------- AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland BIRMINGHAM, GREAT BRITAIN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham NAIROBI, KENYA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nairobi SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seoul --------------------------------------- And here are our 5 candidates for the winter title: BARCELONA, SPAIN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra REYKJAVIK, ICELAND https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reykjavík SANTIAGO, CHILE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago TROJENA, SAUDI ARABIA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom ------------------------------------------- The votes will close at 12pm UK time on THURSDAY DECEMBER 1, when whichever city has most votes in each poll will win. HAPPY VOTING

Nothing is surprising anymore with FIFA... and the tournament hasn't even started

"may be unfamiliar" It literally doesn't exist yet...

The obligatory "mascot looks like X" take is quite something this year https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/nov/15/mascot-paris-olympic-games-2024-likened-to-clitoris-in-trainers-phryges

It might be worth doing but the whole thing about the leadup and all we know about Qatar, knowing everything that's gone before it and around it, has me nowhere near as hyped for this World Cup as usual. The time of year doesn't help either, it should be warm, sunny and long evenings, not wet and getting dark at 4. Even going straight into it from the league season means there's no real buildup, it still feels like it's not really happening - I've not even seen the traditional BBC trailer that heralds any big events. This should be the absolute highlight for any football fan and it feels... flat.

In my mind I made the mistake of reading it out phonetically and I will never not think of them as the Olympic and Paralympic fridges They're cute, so they work - they remind me of the blobs BBC3 had when it started. The 2D ones work much better, makes me think of Asterix* *Should've been him...

Is that a tram or a very long bus? The first picture really looks like a tram but the second has rubber tyres...I assumed Metro meant a proper underground system lol.

Not encouraging. Surely a new stadium as good (or even better) could be built somewhere else in South East Queensland for less than 2.5b? At least you have the luxury of a LOT of time. I can see this ending up with Carrara being levelled and rebuilt tbh.

With Vancouver out of 2030 due to the provincial (emphasis) government... anyone else feeling that Toronto's time might just be coming?

Is it fair to say Rhine Ruhr is the only possible German bid that could get enough public support though? How likely is it? (Also I doubt the UK bid would be London again tbh)

That one embedded, thank you - I'll remember that tip :). I'm not certain how legit it can be, would they be revealing the mascots already? And would they really be the mascots...a moose, Uncle Sam and a cactus?! Really?

...is this legit? https://twitter.com/cabrafutbol/status/1583571909626646529?s=20&t=jIB3UiXuov0liqBDrj8lHg (Why hasn't it embedded?)

...is this legit? https://twitter.com/cabrafutbol/status/1583571909626646529?s=20&t=RmikMg2-7H0G7a23bSFKEw

That looks really cool. Can't help thinking they'd be better off doing the Olympics one there too, if the last two London Jubilee parades are anything to go on then dry land > river - plus I mean come on, it's the Champs Elysées! Very good to see they've given the same style to the Paralympic opening instead of just sticking it in the Stade de France

Well today on BBC1, we got to see an absolutely spectacular addition to the pantheon of ceremonial cockup, courtesy of the Rugby League World Cup. I don't follow RL at all, but I thought I'd see what its opening ceremony would be like... excruciating is the answer. It's something you really would have to see, but sadly there's nothing on YouTube yet, maybe because they want to pretend it never happened. This BBC News report sums it up though: BBC News - Kaiser Chiefs silenced at Rugby League World Cup opening ceremony https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-63271423