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A Note For Tier 2 American Cities


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The IOC may be forced to give a future Olympic Games to Denver, since it seems as though there are very few cities interested in Hosting (there were only 3 for 2018). Id also be curious how many current IOC members were around in 1976 and would still harbor resentment for the Denver Back out?

They may not be around but I think most IOC members are very history-conscious, and Denver is the one fool that had won the Games and then gave them back and now wants them? :blink: What if they change their mind again? Would you risk it? Even if I were not with the IOC in 1970-73, I would ALWAYS remember that episode as that of an ungrateful candidate that blew its chance. Besides, its rivals in the run would PROBABLY bring that out...and immediately that Denver bid is a dead duck.

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The IOC may be forced to give a future Olympic Games to Denver, since it seems as though there are very few cities interested in Hosting (there were only 3 for 2018). Id also be curious how many current IOC members were around in 1976 and would still harbor resentment for the Denver Back out?

Haven't you heard, apparently Reno thinks it will be the next WOG host for the USA? I surely hope a bid out of New England would come to fruitition, would be so much more interesting than a Reno games!

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Haven't you heard, apparently Reno thinks it will be the next WOG host for the USA? I surely hope a bid out of New England would come to fruitition, would be so much more interesting than a Reno games!

New England/Northeast snow is wet...which is why the US Ski federations do not strongly endorse Eastern seaboard bids. Besides Lake Placid has hosted 2x, so that pretty much takes care of the NE USA.

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What about an Anchorage, Alaska Bid? They've bid before and I imagine have much better infrastructure now. That city would keep a strong olympic legacy. Plus because of oil revenues they are pretty well off economically, would be able to fund a winter games. Havent heard much discussion on here about that possibility.

Only if Sarah Palin heads the committee... :lol:

But seriously, #1 - how close and how well developed are the ski areas?

#2 - are the city fathers really interested? If so, the effort has to start with them.

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New England/Northeast snow is wet...which is why the US Ski federations do not strongly endorse Eastern seaboard bids. Besides Lake Placid has hosted 2x, so that pretty much takes care of the NE USA.

SLC and Squaw Valley means 2x WOG for the west coast so that pretty much takes care of them to don't you think? Not to mention Vancouver, which even though is in Canada is still in the geographic region of western North America.

If New England/Northeast has such bad snow then why did the USOC endorse Lake Placid 1980?

Just trying to figure out your argument.

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I really don't think of SLC as the West Coast, it's too far away. It's the Rockies, & geographically speaking, I would think that would be a detriment to a Denver bid. SLC is approximately about the same distance to either Reno (to the west) & Denver (to the east).

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"If New England/Northeast has such bad snow then why did the USOC endorse Lake Placid 1980?"

Well, apparently, no body else wanted them at the time, even in the U.S. And it also marked the first-time that they used artificial snow at those Lake Placid 1980 Winter Olympics.

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The problem that lower tier US cities have is that they are part of the United States...and thus they are competing against bigger named cities.

Are populations and economies that big of an issue? Not really. The US economy is massive. And when you consider that some states have economies the size of many past, present, and future hosts, that isn't really a question. It is just that there can only be one US candidate and generally speaking a city's profile is connected to the country it is in. So the lower tier cities are lower tier because they are American cities.

California has an economy almost equal to France. New York is comparable to Brazil. Texas compares to Canada. Illinois to Mexico. Florida to Korea. But instead of Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, Mexico City, and Seoul competing on their own, you have San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, and Miami battling it out for only one bid and not the one the IOC votes on. And note, those are only the cities in the big states. There are still 45 others.

The numbers just aren't there to support the second tier cities.

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That's the thing, though, when you are part of a giant and rich country. You get lost in the shuffle.

China and Brazil also have a lot of big cities that no one thinks of because Beijing, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo eclipse them for international scope.

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In every industry including the OGs the world will tend to only focus on one or rarely two cities in each country. Just look at the fashion world. In the US, it's all about New York, it is THE American fashion city while Los Angeles is regarded as kind of a playground for ready-to-wear and retail boutiques. And in Brazil Sao Paulo trumps Rio as the Brazilian fashion capital.

But for the US in the OGs it's a struggle just at the national level because there is no set list of 'usual suspects' to bid and there is always the potential for heavy national competition in both summer and winter editions. Because of that, it's enough to disenfranchise potential bid organizers from even trying. Almost every American city above a million or two people has had a serious discussion about a bid at some point, but very few have actually gone into the speculation and USOC application phase. The US cities that do bid have to spend a LOT of time and money in competition for their national bid, and likely more than any other NOC in the world. Most bidding cities in the world, regardless of quality, face the usual odds of 1 in 6 to 9 for summer games and 1 in 4 to 7 for winter games, but for the US that would just be the second round of work.

To put it in hockey terms, it's like the US is down 1 game going into game 6 of a playoff series. They need to win twice in a row while the opponent just has to win once. :P

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Yes, but the US will always, at the end of the play-offs, have representation in the finals, so to speak. It may be more difficult for the individual cities, but the last man standing from the US ought to be more battle hardened and stronger than the European and Asian bids that were handed a wildcard into the finals. That hasn't seemed to be the case recently.

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