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Which 4 cities do u think will make the 2022 Short List?


baron-pierreIV

Which will be the 2022 Finalist cities?  

116 members have voted

  1. 1. Pick 4 that u think will make the Short List.

    • Almaty
      77
    • Beijing-Yankeejoe
      68
    • Krakow-Jasna
      81
    • Lviv
      27
    • Oslo-Kvitjfell
      108
    • Stockholm-Are
      72


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I always thought sliding tracks would be really fun water slides...enclose it for an indoor water-park then adjust it to make it safe, do the water stuff you need, and BAM you've got a venue that will pay for itself year round!

Another option is that the IOC can limit the Winter Games to established ski resorts and their outer-cities. That way we don't end up with another Beijing or Sochi (Yes I know Sochi was an 'established' resort, but the city and resort were no where near what should be expected. The IOC basically said "Let's put the games in the middle of f*cking no where")

Well the sliding centres are open year round for training and some are open to the public to go down with a trained driver. I know both lake placid and Park City do that, and I think Calgary too.

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Well the sliding centres are open year round for training and some are open to the public to go down with a trained driver. I know both lake placid and Park City do that, and I think Calgary too.

Yeah, but wouldn't it be fun to slide down and into a pool? I have a feeling like it could be a huge money maker. Maybe that's what Sochi should do with theirs given the tropical setting.

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Well the sliding centres are open year round for training and some are open to the public to go down with a trained driver. I know both lake placid and Park City do that, and I think Calgary too.

I've done that before at Lake Placid during the summer. Pretty crazy and I'm not big on roller coasters.

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How does "fastest and most technical" translate to "unnecessarily expensive?" I can see where length might impact cost but look at these figures (taken from: http://olympstats.com/2014/01/03/olympic-sliding-tracks/):

There are a lot more factors in the cost of the Vancouver track than just the length and number of curves. Vancouver specifically set out to build the most difficult track in the world. I guarantee there were significant R&D costs associated with the Vancouver track that past cities did not incur. The refrigeration system for the track was likely very expensive as well. The gradient drop alone does not determine how fast the track will be; the track also has to have the right kind of ice. Vancouver also built a training center at the track even though there was already a state-of-the-art training facility at the Calgary track, which is still where most of the Canadian sliders train. All of these were things that the Vancouver organizers chose to do. None of them were necessary. They could have built a Salt Lake-style track for less money, and it would have been just fine for the Olympics.

Once construction started on the track, I agree that there wasn't much the organizers could do about the rising cost of steel and concrete. However, they should have known that almost any time someone tries to build the "best" or "most difficult" facility, significant cost overruns are a major risk involved in the project.

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All that is very interesting and informative.

Are you sure the IF didn't request the training facility?

Fabrication is usually far more expensive than the design phase. How much more did Vancouver spend on their design?

How much could Vancouver have saved by going with the most basic design acceptable?

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Kinda off topic, but why don't curves provide a tough challenge relative to pure speed? Whistler is fast, but it doesn't have the big curves the German tracks like Oberhof do. A slower running track would let you reduce the length of the track, which should be one easy way to reduce the cost.

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I do not think the training facility was required. It was built with the intention of giving the Canadian sliders a leg up on the competition. Hardly anyone else was allowed to train on the track prior to the Games outside of the required international training week.

I would guess that Vancouver could have used less expensive steel and concrete if they hadn't been set on creating such a fast and technical track. I work for a company that produces a product that's the best on the market. We could cut costs by using cheaper materials, but we don't because we don't want to compromise the quality of our product. I suspect the same thinking governed VANOC as far as the track was concerned. Even the most cost-conscious committees sometimes overreach on spending. The sliding track was the one venue where VANOC went for top-of-the-line and ended up overspending considerably.

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But that doesn't answer the question. What is "considerably?" What would a reasonable Olympic sliding track cost? I still don't feel like we have enough information to grasp this situation.

Never stopped us from discussing a topic before. We're obviously not experts here, but if we're talking about what the IOC should do in order to address their issues (whether they actually do it obviously is a different story altogether), it's worth talking about whether it's something they should look into. I think the big question that needs to be asked (and not that anyone here has the means to answer it) is what happened between 2002 and 2006 that Cesana built a track so expensive that they couldn't maintain and operate it for more than 8 years. And why Vancouver's track is a gigantic money pit. Maybe somewhere in there is an answer to the question of how the costs of the sliding sports can be reduced.

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Of course it's worth talking about, but without more data, everyone's opinions are based on ill-informed guesswork.

Again, how is that different from the majority of the conversations and discussions on this forum? How is that different from about 90% of all threads on discussion forums on the entire Internet? (yes, I know that's an exaggeration)

We're all a bunch of armchair experts here, but since we're unlikely to unearth piles of data and information, we just have to go with what we've already got. I'm more than okay with that. If you want to call those opinions ill-informed (and I assume 'everyone' also includes you), you're probably right. But I'd like to think some of our guesswork has at least some decent bases in reality. And thank you to Barcelona for offering up some informative information for all of us.

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Again, how is that different from the majority of the conversations and discussions on this forum? How is that different from about 90% of all threads on discussion forums on the entire Internet? (yes, I know that's an exaggeration)

We're all a bunch of armchair experts here, but since we're unlikely to unearth piles of data and information, we just have to go with what we've already got. I'm more than okay with that. If you want to call those opinions ill-informed (and I assume 'everyone' also includes you), you're probably right. But I'd like to think some of our guesswork has at least some decent bases in reality. And thank you to Barcelona for offering up some informative information for all of us.

I think it's very different.

IOC politics and the politics of Olympic bids are more discernable -- especially to those of us who have followed this for decades -- than a cost analysis of engineering and constructing a very specialized venue for a unique sport. One doesn't have to be an engineer or contractor with sliding track experience to be able to reasonably evaluate an Olympic bid cycle.

It's a waste of everyone's time to wage a war minus facts.

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Turns out there is a water slide in Jamaica themed like a track:

water-slide.jpg?resize=468%2C293

Apparently there are a lot of Alpine styled slides...I'm telling you this is how you make the track a positive legacy piece.

Water slides and sliding tracks are not at all the same thing. You can't just pump water down a sliding track and call it a water park. Water slides are steeper, narrower and have sharper turns.

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Good points- also the Central Asian nations I have travelled through have yet to kick off all their weird Soviet era bureaucracy and craziness around travellers- visa restrictions, money controls, lack of use of credit cards, need for 'invite letters' and restrictions on independent travel, inventories of all your travel goods (like phones/cameras/ medications) even reports of bugging hotels, plus all the paranoia of a one party dictatorship.

I love travelling around Central Asia, but it aint easy at times!

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But that doesn't answer the question. What is "considerably?" What would a reasonable Olympic sliding track cost? I still don't feel like we have enough information to grasp this situation.

The best answer I can provide to these questions is to determine what it would cost to build the Salt Lake track today. The Salt Lake track is a shorter, easier, "no frills" track, but it worked perfectly fine for the Olympics. If an Olympic host were to build that track today, I can't imagine it would cost what the last 3 Olympic tracks have cost.

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I think it's very different.

IOC politics and the politics of Olympic bids are more discernable -- especially to those of us who have followed this for decades -- than a cost analysis of engineering and constructing a very specialized venue for a unique sport. One doesn't have to be an engineer or contractor with sliding track experience to be able to reasonably evaluate an Olympic bid cycle.

It's a waste of everyone's time to wage a war minus facts.

Once again.. how is that unlike the majority of what's on the Internet, particularly discussion boards like these? Most of what's on this forum is hardly a constructive use of anyone's time. We're here because it's an interesting subject for us and it's something we enjoy talking about even though no one really has any stake in any of this. With all due respect to the folks that run this site, these boards are pretty much a waste of everyone's time. And yet here we all are anyway.

And I find it interesting talk about you're trying to find context with these discussions in the form of "wage a war." No wonder these discussions get so heated and there are so many ridiculous arguments if 2 people discussing something relatively pointless to them is akin to waging a war.

Turns out there is a water slide in Jamaica themed like a track:

water-slide.jpg?resize=468%2C293

Apparently there are a lot of Alpine styled slides...I'm telling you this is how you make the track a positive legacy piece.

I've been on alpine slides before. Used to do it a lot as a kid. A bobsled/luge track wouldn't easily double as an alpine slide though. Usually those are set up with 3 or 4 parallel track so more people can go down at the same time.

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I'd anticipate (in the event Almaty 2022 eventuates) that KZ would look at easing things up a bit.

They would most likely create a new Olympic visa like Russia did, but it's hard to see where tourists would even stay in Almaty. Kazakhstan would build more hotels, but those will be used up by the media, officials, etc.

If Almaty wins I imagine there will be few people going there.

I've been on alpine slides before. Used to do it a lot as a kid. A bobsled/luge track wouldn't easily double as an alpine slide though. Usually those are set up with 3 or 4 parallel track so more people can go down at the same time.

Turning a bobsled track into a water slide is a nonstarter, but they should be able to use other kinds of sleds with it. However once you add in liability insurance it would still never pay for its upkeep.

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The best answer I can provide to these questions is to determine what it would cost to build the Salt Lake track today. The Salt Lake track is a shorter, easier, "no frills" track, but it worked perfectly fine for the Olympics. If an Olympic host were to build that track today, I can't imagine it would cost what the last 3 Olympic tracks have cost.

Fair enough. I'd love to figure out what that figure is (roughly).

Turning a bobsled track into a water slide is a nonstarter, but they should be able to use other kinds of sleds with it. However once you add in liability insurance it would still never pay for its upkeep.

Exactly. It's the operating costs that kill you. In that story from Vancouver the revenue was around 20% of the operating cost. That's never gonna be a viable business model.

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Vancouver had one advantage over the Kazakhs: there was sufficient interest in sliding sports at the elite level and building a new track--particularly a more challenging and technical one compared to Calgary--was in the interest of the sport.

Canada was competitive in bobsleigh and skeleton and ascendant in luge prior to being awarded the 2010 Games. The track is now a core aspect of how sliding sports are developed in Canada: both in terms of what it offers elite athletes and how it adds a second space to develop grassroots space. Where you find elite sliders you will find at least one elite sliding track.

The Kazakhs will throw whatever's necessary money-wise to host the OWGs. They still don't deserve them; no oppressive régime should be awarded the Games ever again.

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You know, I've often thought that if there was one place down south that could perhaps economically maintain a sliding track it could be NZ/Queenstown. The whole region is really built on its year-round reputation for thrill, adventure and winter sports. Always thought a sliding track would fit in well with Queenstown's high-adrenalin attraction status.

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