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Oslo 2022


kernowboy

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Yes baron, no country NEEDS a Winter Legacy. If they are capable of offering up such a plan that entices the IOC, that's one thing. But Poland, the country and its people, will be able to move on if they're not awarded a Winter Olympics. That said, a case can be made (and a pretty good one) that Krakow hosting the Winter Olympics does more for the Olympic movement than holding the Olympics in Oslo does. If you want to articulate those arguments, go ahead. But you have shown a pretty clear lack of objectivity on this one, so you making those arguments starts to ring a little hollow. Everyone is entitled to an opinion here. You. Me. Even the little kids.. sometimes. And that's what they are: opinions. You don't know better than the rest of us. Likewise, we may not know better than you. It would be nice though if we could all be equals in this rather than you needing to berate anyone who thinks that an Olympics in Oslo is an acceptable outcome.

That is SOOOOOOOOOOO RICH!! Berating me for my style and my arguments -- YET there you go correcting me in how I phrase and frame things becuz it doesn't meet your standards. U know...I'm a little tired of you FOREVER trying to correct me. I'm NOT going to change. Why don't you look in the mirror, D, and maybe do a little self-examination? Do I keep correcting you or outing you the way you do me??

If u don't like what I post or HOW I post them. Skip 'em if you don't like them. But I am NOT going to change for anyone else here. I really DON'T owe anyone here the obligation to change. These are bidding boards, i.e., competitive boards. I am VERY COMPETITIVE. Tough.

How about just leaving me alone? You post what you want -- leaving me out of it . ANd I will do the same.

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Why is this a competitive board (other than logo contests etc)?

It's a forum to exchange views IMHO, on the subject of Olympic bids mainly.

If you see this exchange as a competition of some sorts, I think you've got the completely wrong attitude, but this would eventually explain how you managed to produce your impressive post count.

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Why is this a competitive board (other than logo contests etc)?

It's a forum to exchange views IMHO, on the subject of Olympic bids mainly.

Indeed -- and your snide remarks have NOT gone unnoticed. Well, in the discussion of various Olympic bids, I don't see how it cannot get competitive at some point? Who decides that? You? me? the Mod? :blink:

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But I've still yet to figure out why you are that vocal about them because the way you're talking about Krakow and Poland sounds an awful lot like you talking about Reno where you'll point out every positive of the bid and do your best to downplay any negative. Meanwhile when anyone says something supportive of the competition, you feel the need to jump in as if we have no idea what we're talking about because we don't agree with you.

I'm not certain, but I think this is a kind of game for Baron. Sort of like a debating class where it doesn't matter what you say only that you win the argument.

To Baron: I am not trying to insult you. I am genuinely curious about your position.

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I'm not certain, but I think this is a kind of game for Baron. Sort of like a debating class where it doesn't matter what you say only that you win the argument.

To Baron: I am not trying to insult you. I am genuinely curious about your position.

There are things I feel very strongly, passionately about. And I feel I would be remiss to myself if I didn't give my best to stop certain things (within m power -- like for example, I really feel very strongly that Denver should FORFEIT the next slot for a US winter city candidate becuz they f&cked up the one chance that was already on their lap 40 years ago. ) My moral compass says someone else should have a crack at it. Same thing here. I think Krakow deserves every right to be the 2022 host over Oslo becuz Norway has and had Olympic honors in spades already.

(No; I don't get it that you were trying to insult me. It was merely an observation on your part. I get that. Thank you. )

And I know I'm not in the corridors of power within the IOC; so this is probably the closest I will get to having my say -- for whatever that's worth. Thus, I am extremely vocal and passionate about what I believe in. So @ everyone out there I may have offended, excuse me for living.

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There are things I feel very strongly, passionately about. And I feel I would be remiss to myself if I didn't give my best to stop certain things (within m power -- like for example, I really feel very strongly that Denver should FORFEIT the next slot for a US winter city candidate becuz they f&cked up the one chance that was already on their lap 40 years ago. ) My moral compass says someone else should have a crack at it. Same thing here. I think Krakow deserves every right to be the 2022 host over Oslo becuz Norway has and had Olympic honors in spades already.

(No; I don't get it that you were trying to insult me. It was merely an observation on your part. I get that. Thank you. )

And I know I'm not in the corridors of power within the IOC; so this is probably the closest I will get to having my say -- for whatever that's worth. Thus, I am extremely vocal and passionate about what I believe in. So @ everyone out there I may have offended, excuse me for living.

So if Norway shouldn't get it because they already hosted, then America shouldn't either?

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stop replying to me, Tony. U are kaput with me. U don't exist as far as I am concerned. Sorry.

You need help. Your such a rude individual. You preach your opinions. You say mean things.

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That's my thing as well. It's not so much that you're for Krakow as that you seem to be so fiercely against Oslo as I'd you have a personal stake in this or something

Well,you got that right. I really don't think it should go to Oslo; so every little bit helps. That's just my mojo. And which is why we are all individuals.

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I'm not certain, but I think this is a kind of game for Baron. Sort of like a debating class where it doesn't matter what you say only that you win the argument.

Gee, you think? What gave it away... when we went from his uber-passionate promotion of having the games return to Tahoe for the second time (and fifth for the US) to his sudden love of new horizons? Or maybe when he threw in a Norwegian Cruise Line experience (a company based in Miami) as part of his anti-Oslo-Olympics tirade?

Baron's having fun. Play along or ignore him.

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Sports illustrated

Citizens of Norway, please support Oslo's bid for 2022 Winter Olympics

http://olympics.si.com/olympics/2014/02/21/sochi-olympics-open-letter-norway-oslo

729x.jpg

SOCHI -- Dear Citizens of Norway,

I don’t need to tell you that your capital, Oslo, is bidding for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Or that, according to pre-Sochi polling, some 55 percent of you don’t want them.

Or at least a majority of you doesn’t want your government to approve a relatively modest financial guarantee of $5.4 billion, less than one-ninth the cost of the Sochi Olympics, which the IOC would need to give Oslo the Olympics.

And that means we have a problem, you and I. Because the world desperately wants you -- needs for you -- to change your mind.

The last Winter Olympics you hosted, in Lillehammer in 1994, charmed us. Atmospheric flurries fell on an Opening Ceremony that featured a torchbearer who flew off the ski jump. Two weeks of clear, windless weather followed. As if on cue, light snow returned just as the closing ceremonies began. And you supplied an unmatched atmosphere throughout, with tens of thousands of you camping out overnight along the cross-country course to wave flags and rattle cowbells as Bjorn Daehlie skied to his gold medals.

If your concern is that an Oslo Olympics would be too big and costly, don’t let the current Winter Games mislead you. Sochi is an anomaly, its $51 billion price tag the result of building an Olympics from scratch in a country with a culture of corruption totally alien to you. Because more than half of Oslo’s envisioned venues already exist, bid organizers peg the cost at only $3.4 billion in public funds, and another $2 billion to be raised privately.

Yes, the Winter Olympics have grown bigger than a town like Lillehammer, with its population of 22,000, could accommodate today. But that’s why Oslo 2022 CEO Eli Grimsby insists that Oslo 2022 would not be “Lillehammer II.” And Oslo is, in its way, perfect for a Winter Games in the 21st century -- a major international city with ethnic diversity, urban parkland and reliable winter weather.

If you’re not sold on the virtues of your own capital, consider what, if you were to decline, we’d be condemned to. Now that Munich, Stockholm and St. Moritz have dropped out, the other candidates are Beijing, Krakow, Lviv and Almaty.

If there’s snow and ice anywhere near Beijing, you couldn’t see it through the haze. Besides, we just had a Summer Games there in 2008—and if China were slotted in after Pyeongchang (2018) and Tokyo (2020), that would make for three straight Olympics in Asia.

Krakow? Love Krakow. Great town square. A UNESCO World Heritage town square, no less. Krakow 2022: Best Medals Plaza Ever! And if Winter Olympic events were staged in potato fields, the Polish bid would get a spot on my list. But for a mountain large enough for the downhill, organizers propose going to Slovakia, which is another country altogether. Joint bids are heavy organizational lifts that, fortunately, the IOC frowns upon.

The candidacy of Lviv suffered this week from the Ukrainian government’s deadly crackdown on demonstrators in Kiev, which led many athletes to leave Sochi early. Given the grief the IOC got over its decision to award these Olympics to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the world would groan if the Winter Games were handed to another democracy-flouting country on the Black Sea.

And then there’s Almaty. Worldly though you Norwegians are, you may be forgiven for not knowing that Almaty is in Kazakhstan. Almaty used to be the capital, but in 1997 lost that status to Astana. So it is now the demoted capital of Kazakhstan.

And there’s the lace-panties issue. Just last week, 30 women were arrested after taking to the streets of Almaty with lace panties pulled over their heads to protest a ban on the importation of same. (It had to do with—I’m not making this up—the inability of lace panties to absorb moisture at government-mandated levels for underwear.)

No, Norway, you would not want a sequel to Borat on your conscience.

Seriously: In the end, it’s not about your inferior competition. It’s about you -- and we love you.

We love you for your humility, for the way biathlete Ole-Einar Bjoerndalen essentially apologized this week for surpassing the all-time Winter Olympics medal record of his countryman, Daehlie.

We love you for your frugality. In Lillehammer you wound up with a $70 million surplus, and an Oslo Olympics could once again model thrift for the world. Much of those $2 billion in private funds would build a media village, which could be repurposed post-Olympics to help house the fastest growing population of any capital in Europe. (I can assure you that we journalists don’t need luxurious accommodations -- though after Sochi, a shower curtain in the bathroom would be nice.)

We love you for your common sense. Like municipalities all over the world, your cities and towns have lately gone through brutal rounds of budget cutting, and that explains the skepticism of many of you. But a well-organized Games would goose everything from grassroots sports participation and the arts, to volunteerism and multicultural cohesion, no small thing in Oslo, which has an immigrant population that includes 150 nationalities. As Grimsby says, “It’s easier to find the price of the bid than the value in it.”

We love you for your compassion. You’re the people who quoted Robert Frost over the p.a. to U.S. speedskater Dan Jansen after he won his gold medal in Lillehammer. You’re the people who sent 13 tons of sports equipment to Eritrea with Jansen’s rival, multiple medalist and Right to Play founder Johann Olav Koss, after the Lillehammer Games ended. You’re the people who gave Bill Koch of the U.S., the cross-country skier with that newfangled skating technique, all kinds of guff when he competed during the Eighties -- and then flew him to Oslo in the Nineties so a dozen of your former skiers, from several generations, could apologize to him, each handing him a single red rose on live TV.

We love you for the way you honor tradition, but aren’t afraid to freshen it up. The Nordic center in the suburb of Holmenkollen remains a monument to Oslo’s role as host of the 1952 Winter Olympics, but now with a dazzling new ski jump, built for the 2011 World Championships you so ably hosted. And an Oslo Olympics would, for old time’s sake, even have a little Lillehammer thrown in, with bobsled, luge and skeleton going off on the ice run at Hunderfossen, the slalom taking place at Hafjell, and the downhill at Kvitfjell, where Alberto Tomba won his last Olympic medal. Rail lines and highways, improved since 1994, and a new airport north of Oslo, would put Lillehammer within two hours of the capital, which is nothing by Turin and Vancouver standards.

We love how you value youth. So consider an Oslo Olympics a gift to your compatriots now in high school, who support the Games by a two-to-one margin; and for the city’s elementary schoolchildren, nearly half of whom speak a language other than Norwegian at home, and for whom a domestic Olympics would be a global festival of affirmation. And if you’re elderly, follow the lead of former Oslo mayor Per-Ditlev Simonsen, who vows to serve as an Olympic volunteer because in 2022 he’ll only be 90.

And it’s not just kids you love. You love dogs, too -- no small consideration after Sochi, where they were put down, and Pyeongchang, where they’ll show up on menus. (Old joke: In Korea, they say “It’s raining cats and appetizers.”)

Opposition to Oslo’s bid is strongest among those of you up north, where the 2018 candidacy of Tromso wasn’t even put forward by your national Olympic committee and hard feelings persist. But to withhold support from a Norwegian candidacy because of some sectional rivalry would be unworthy of you. The northernmost among you are Norway’s hardiest citizens, and most likely to embrace friluftsliv, the healthy, outdoors lifestyle that helps account for your sitting atop the all-time Winter Olympic medals table, with 324 as of Friday.

I understand too that some of you, especially beyond Oslo, have an issue with 2022 tub-thumper Gerhard Heiberg, the grandee who ran the Lillehammer Games and now sits on the IOC. You don’t like the IOC’s undemocratic culture and take it out on Heiberg, whom you find a bit snooty. Even if he looks like he chooses his clothes from the closet of the guy who used to be married to Diana Ross, there’s no need to punish the rest of us.

This is bigger than that, and deadlines are sneaking up on you. By July the IOC will have trimmed its list down to three, and by the end of the year your parliament will have to approve that financial guarantee. The final verdict from the IOC comes in July 2015.

I’ve heard about the origins of your tradition of idraet, the principle of “sport in service of nation,” that has made humble servant-champions of your skiers and skaters and biathletes, and even of your loudly-trousered male curlers. All I’m asking for is an inversion of idraet: “nation in service of sport.”

So don’t let the rest of the world down. Embrace your destiny. And take courage in knowing that the toughest thing about an Oslo Olympics would likely be choosing among Koss, Daehlie and Bjoerndalen for the honor of lighting the cauldron.

The Lords of the Rings couldn’t possibly want to give the Games to anyone else. Please don’t force them to.

Sincerely,

Alexander Wolff

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Yes, great article, especially that few paragraphs about other bidding cities. The levels of mockery and stereotypes are sky-high. I'm really curious how would he pick holes in Stockholm, if Swedes were still in race? He would need something heavier than potato fields and Borat.

Ariticles like that proves one thing to me: low public support isn't really so minor problem, like some people here depict it. If they were no threats to the bid, we wouldn't see the IOC members and some journalists constantly sucking up to the Norwegians.

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And if Winter Olympic events were staged in potato fields, the Polish bid would get a spot on my list.

Americans care about their image of less intelligent than rest of the world.

Hope IOC can discuss about real problems of bids, not vegetbles issues.

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Americans care about their image of less intelligent than rest of the world.

Hope IOC can discuss about real problems of bids, not vegetbles issues.

Well, those potatoes fields are just an euphemism for Poland being a sh**hole country :)

And this is nothing comparing to the "arguments" he pulled out against Almaty.

(BTW. yearly potatoes production devided by country population is:

USA: 0,612

Poland: 0,205)

I have nothing against Oslo, its citizens, or Oslo Bidding Committee - they are spotless and did nothing to breach any rules or having been disrespectful to other bidding cities. I'm perfectly OK with pointing Krakow's bid disadvantages, but from a journalists I would expect some more impartiality and fact-based arguments.

I think that the big Norwegian medal achievment will affect the public support way more positively than such a bias, suck-up articles. If I were a Norwegian and read such a thing, I would feel like someone is just insulting my intelligence.

The part about society loving dogs is my favourite. Some might even use it against future Canadian bid. I mean, Canadians love dogs, and it didn't stop them from killing those poor huskies when Vancouver OWG were over.

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No wonder I'm in favour of Oslo hosting....

This:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/marietelling/what-european-country-do-you-actually-belong-in

gave me Norway as a result :-)

Anyone else giving it a try?

I got France

You’re naturally quite pessimistic, and you’re always vocal about your complaints. But no one knows how to enjoy the little things in life quite as well as you do. You like nothing more than a delicious meal with good wine and great company.

I love to go to the beach and ski in the same county I love food and drinks but I don't like to pay high taxes so If I could move to anywhere in Europe it will be Germany it's colder then my liking but Germany will be an awesome country to live in either Munich or Berlin for me.

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I got France

You’re naturally quite pessimistic, and you’re always vocal about your complaints. But no one knows how to enjoy the little things in life quite as well as you do. You like nothing more than a delicious meal with good wine and great company.

I love to go to the beach and ski in the same county I love food and drinks but I don't like to pay high taxes so If I could move to anywhere in Europe it will be Germany it's colder then my liking but Germany will be an awesome country to live in either Munich or Berlin for me.

Germany? These guys? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHZR9SA5pOg

(What was that about Americans grossly stereotyping other countries?)

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No wonder I'm in favour of Oslo hosting....

This:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/marietelling/what-european-country-do-you-actually-belong-in

gave me Norway as a result :-)

Anyone else giving it a try?

LOL! Got Norway as well.

  1. You’re extremely reliable, independent and tolerant. You hate injustice more than anything in the world. You love nature and you’re always up for a new adventure.

I was probably expecting Holland.

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