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IOC Loses Another Candidate as Oslo's 2022 bid is Crushed


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Well, it's confirmed. We got another olympics which will be a dictator plaything. And now that China might commit a Tianamen 2.0 at this pace on regards of the current events in Hong Kong, their reputation will be even more tarnished.

I really think people are overstating the concerns about China. Yes, it's a single party state that has a LONG way to go in democratizing. But they are mostly moving in the right direction, and it's not as if western countries are without fault either. There have been plenty of protests in the United States recently as well.

Kazakhstan is not in the news as much, but its government is worse than China's. The Central Asian countries don't have many protests because their governments frequently kill people who protest. If the Chinese turn to using live ammunition against their people then I'll change my mind. But loads of governments -including democratic ones- use tear gas and rubber bullets against protesters.

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Hong Kong is a non factor in this race. The IOC, just like FIFA, pays lip service to the human rights issue. Another Tianamenn Square type disaster could occur and the IOC would say it's tragic and sad (just like FIFA with the hundreds of workers who've died in Qatar) but at the end of the day, it isn't going to change their minds.

Back to 2008, if memory serves me correctly, Beijing was the favorite, but lost to Sydney because the Chinese knew they were the favorites and were somewhat arrogant about it. The only change that the IOC required from China was they had to move beach volleyball from Tianamenn Square.

I'm predicting that Beijing not only wins this race, they win this big.

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He's just as dead as this race.

Can it really be classified as a "race" anymore, though:

Begging Beijing to host 2022 Winter Olympics bad sign for IOC: Arthur

Norway ends bid, leaving Kazakhstan as only other contender. Wheres a ringer Vancouver! when you need one.

Richard Lautens / Toronto Star file

After hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics, the IOC appears destined to award the 2022 Winter Games to Beijing as well.

Published on Oct 01 2014

Bruce Arthur

SPORTS COLUMNIST

Norway loves the Winter Olympics, and you can tell. Norway is a nation of ice and snow and occasionally a remarkable capacity to carry oxygen in the blood, and as a result has more winter medals than any nation on earth, despite just over five million people to choose from. Norway is the heart of winter, and of the Games.

But Norway doesnt want the Winter Olympics, thanks. Oslo said no on Wednesday, after its bid for the 2022 Games had limped along for a while in the face of strong public opposition. The people of Norway werent interested in a bid, 20 years after Lillehammer was such a success.

So the candidates for the 2022 Olympics are down to Beijing, China, and Almaty, Kazakhstan, which isnt quite ideal. Sweden, Poland and Ukraine dropped out of the running in fairness, the host of the 2014 Olympics had a fair bit to do with that last one and before that Switzerland and Germany did the same, citing a lack of desire to build the infrastructure. Some claimed it was because countries were scared away by Sochis $51-billion price tag. As The Associated Press put it, The IOC has acknowledged that it has failed to properly explain the difference between operating and capital budgets.

Sure, sounds pretty tricky. Those various countries couldnt be expected to understand that they wouldnt also have to spend $50 billion, right? Mmm hmm.

After Norway said no, the IOC released a screw-you-guys statement calling it a missed opportunity for Norwegians, and claimed Norway didnt bother sending senior officials to important meetings. The IOC helpfully added the decision to drop the bid was made by Norways politicians on the basis of half-truths and factual inaccuracies.

Thats the sound of an organization that realizes the jig might be up. The IOC is offering $880 million to help stage the Games, and even Sochis operations budget as opposed to its capital budget, which built parts of two cities that gradually fell apart as the Games soldiered on was only about $2.2 billion, or a little more than Vancouvers.

And still, Norway wasnt interested. Whoops.

The Olympics were just in Beijing six years ago, and it was spectacular. I mean, they displaced 1.5-million people and spent an estimated $43 billion, and both the smog and human rights protesters gradually vanished as the Games went on, and one journalist from Cuba summed up a lot when he told the AP, Im surprised how tightly controlled and complicated everything is here. Hong Kong is boiling now, too, and could boil over.

But wow, the visuals. In related news, the IOC recorded a $383.3-million profit on a then-record $2.4 billion worth of revenue in 2008.

Kazakhstan, though: that would be a frontier. Kazakhstan is rich in oil and natural gas, and also ranks 140th out of 177 countries in the world in corruption, as measured by transparency.org. Its basically a dictatorial state, and Human Rights Watch notes that Kazakhstan maintains a poor human rights record, and that torture remains common in places of detention. Ah.

Kazakhstan also finished last in 11 of the 14 categories the IOC uses to score bids. If it happens there would be ample Borat jokes, and everyone would get to say they got to go to Kazakhstan that one time, assuming Russia hasnt invaded by then. It could also be the year the soccer World Cup will be held in Qatar, four years after being held in Russia, just in case you had any illusions left about how global sports works.

After Sochi, though, new president Thomas Bach talked about sustainability of bids, and the IOC adjusted its charter to include prohibition of any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise.

But if the IOC could stomach Russia and China in a six-year span, it can stomach almost anything. And for 2022, it doesnt currently have much of a choice.

So now the IOC has to drag their big beautiful TV show somewhere regrettable. Beijings air pollution has actually worsened since 2008, and the human rights arent any better. But Kazakhstan would mean humping this show into the wilderness, to the borders of civilized possibility, and the IOC would have to bet that the president-for-life wouldnt get toppled between now and then.

So unless they can roust a ringer Vancouver! Calgary! St. Moritz! itll be back to Beijing, and a special sort of humiliation. It wont just be that the IOC was reduced to peddling the Olympics to autocratic, anti-democratic regimes, where the Games ballooned into a colossal, theatrical grotesquerie. It will be that they had to go slinking back to one of them twice.

http://m.thestar.com/#/article/sports

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A BBC article:

This paragraph certainly raised my eyebrows:

"The IOC's astonishing 7,000 pages of demands - including meetings with the king, VIP cocktail parties and dedicated traffic lanes, as revealed by newspaper VG - did not go down at all well in Norway."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/winter-olympics/29455789

Now dedicated traffic lanes might be negotiable but demands for meetings with the king and fancy cocktail parties? What the f**k is all THAT about ??? :angry:

Is Bach going to get a handle on this kind of nonsense before it drives everybody away or is he going to be content for China and Russia to host every single Olympic event from now on? <_<

Or is he part of the problem??? :blink:

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A BBC article:

This paragraph certainly raised my eyebrows:

"The IOC's astonishing 7,000 pages of demands - including meetings with the king, VIP cocktail parties and dedicated traffic lanes, as revealed by newspaper VG - did not go down at all well in Norway."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/winter-olympics/29455789

Now dedicated traffic lanes might be negotiable but demands for meetings with the king and fancy cocktail parties? What the f**k is all THAT about ??? :angry:

Is Bach going to get a handle on this kind of nonsense before it drives everybody away or is he going to be content for China and Russia to host every single Olympic event from now on? <_<

Or is he part of the problem??? :blink:

Google translated the VG Sporten article.

Couldn't believe what I was reading!

See for yourself:

http://www.vg.no/sport/ol-2022/ioc-krever-gratis-sprit-paa-stadion-og-cocktail-fest-med-kongen/a/23306598/

Oslo Olympics may be two weeks of pampering party:

IOC requires the free booze in the stadium and cocktail party with the King ** Inviting himself to the Palace ** Individual roads, entrances and VIP bars ** 50 luxury cars with drivers
2302672.jpg

DRINKS ON THE HOUSE: IOC prefer that King Harald and Queen Sonja takes the bill for the alcohol to be enjoyed during the opening ceremony. Here's the royal couple on their way up from the Royal Yacht in September.

Photo: BERIT ROALD , SCANPIX NTB

If Erna Solberg and the Conservatives going into the Olympics say they not only accepted the sports fest, but also a whopping pampering party.

So busy is the IOC tops of their own privileges that the eight years in advance have specified what kind of alcohol served them to have at various events during the Olympics.

In total, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) 7000 pages of requirements and specifications to Oslo søkerby.Much is normal security requirements and arrangements, but many pages is also about how the IOC delegates will have the best OL, fired up with continuous access to alcohol, special service and luxury food.

VG has gone through the open "technical manuals" and found a number of intricate requirements you hardly heard of.

Among other demands IOC members following:

** To meet the King before the opening ceremony.Afterwards, they shall have the cocktail reception, where the drinks are payable by the Royal Family or possibly the Norwegian Olympic Committee.

** Full control over all advertising spaces throughout the city of Oslo as long as the games progress. Only the IOC's own sponsors will receive advertising. Even street vendors must be removed.

** All IOC members will get every opportunity for its new mobile phone with Norwegian subscription. The phone must be of the brand Samsung.

City council leader Stian Berger Røsland as leader seeks committee for Oslo Olympics confirms several of the most striking points to VG:

- In Norway, it is not true that one can invite themselves visiting the castle, as it must in case his Majesty invite IOC there. I realize that many of these points may appear strange, says Røsland.

Today 48 meetings Conservative Members of Parliament Erna Solberg to give her advice on what she and the government should do with the Olympic application:

Discard it or say yes and send it to parliament in hopes of creating OL majority with Labour .

- Sobriety has been a key

Conservative chairman of the culture committee, Svein Harberg, confirming that the IOC's role and requirements may be an issue.

- It is not unnatural that we want to signal our thoughts about it, but it is entirely up to the bid committee in Oslo having to negotiate with the IOC about these requirements, says Harberg adding:

- There is no doubt that sobriety has been central to the debate about a Norwegian Olympic Games.

Where central sobriety stands for IOC has long been somewhat less clear. Here's a broader overview of the demands they make to consideration of themselves when Oslo was to get the Olympics:

TRANSPORT **

* Organizer City shall provide and pay their own cars with driver for IOC tops, IOC members and other IOC believes should have own car with driver

* Other traffic should be limited. IOC proposes the closure of schools and the local people are encouraged to take vacations

* There should be created their own Olympic field on all roads where IOC tops shall walk. Here, ordinary people and public transport refused to run

* Separate entrances for IOC tops at the airport

* IOC president to receive the solemn view out on the runway on arrival Norway

* Traffic rules and traffic lights must be adjusted so that the Olympic traffic is prioritized

* Ban on swinging on the roads to and from the Olympic construction

OWN ** IOC-HOTEL

* Should be particularly well pre-washed and service people should be alert to repair the slightest mistake immediately.

* IOC members will be received with a smile on arrival at hotel

* Hour Front emergency services available at the hotel

2302674.jpg

Olympic grin: Crown Prince Haakon and Thomas Bach found the tone at an event in the Norwegian house in Sochi. If Bach and the rest of the IOC gang gets to decide, it becomes more regal mingling next time.

Photo: OLE KRISTIAN FEED , VG

* Greeting from local Olympic boss and hotel manager set up in rooms with seasonal fruits and cakes.

* Hot breakfast buffet with new dishes from day to day. Additional staffing so that bosses drop queue.

* Bars at the hotel maintains the "extra late" and the mini bars shall be Coca-Cola products

* 24-hour room service, butler service and washing and pressure service

* The hotel must have shops and they do not exhibit products that compete with Olympic sponsors

MEETING ROOMS **

* Must have immediate access to all-inclusive banquet service

* All rooms must keep exactly 20 degrees all the time

* Meeting room IOC board will use must be equipped with a rectangular conference table that is empty in the middle

** PLAN ON STADIUM

* IOC members to be dropped off just outside the stadium, and escorted to the VIP lounge of dedicated staff

* There should be continuous access to sufficient food and drink of "high quality".Light snacks and canapés are not good enough

* Provision of hot dishes must be replaced regularly as IOC peaks may risk having to eat more meals in the lounge during the Olympics

* All furniture should be OL-shaped and have "Olympic appearance," and it should be easy to navigate between the lounge and seats in the stands

* During the opening and closing ceremonies, there must be full bar available. On competition days, it's ok with just beer and wine in the lounge at the stadium.

- Concerned good Norwegian values

How many of the points that actually becomes a reality in the event of Oslo Olympics in 2022 depends on negotiations between Oslo and IOC after the Parliament may decide to provide government guarantees so that the application can be sent.

Eli Grimsby is the director of Oslo's Olympic agency. She can not comment on all the different requirements directly, but said the general rule must be that the IOC members pay for itself.

- But is it appropriate to make such separate files in the road for IOC members, so they require?

- It is not necessary to build separate files for them. They may, if they wish, take advantage of the same files that will be reserved athletes and other accredited personnel.Cars and private drivers will also have to be paid by the IOC itself and not by Norwegian taxpayers, says Grimsby - and continues:

- We are committed to making the Olympics in good Norwegian values ​​and it is entirely possible with these requirements.

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I really think people are overstating the concerns about China. Yes, it's a single party state that has a LONG way to go in democratizing. But they are mostly moving in the right direction, and it's not as if western countries are without fault either. There have been plenty of protests in the United States recently as well.

Kazakhstan is not in the news as much, but its government is worse than China's. The Central Asian countries don't have many protests because their governments frequently kill people who protest. If the Chinese turn to using live ammunition against their people then I'll change my mind. But loads of governments -including democratic ones- use tear gas and rubber bullets against protesters.

And protests around Europe. The difference is that these protests are rarely met with a military crack down and are for the most part peaceful. The final thing is that protests here are against laws that are trying to be passed or have been passed by a democratically elected government controlled by at the least two parties not one.

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Google translated the VG Sporten article.

Couldn't believe what I was reading!

See for yourself:

http://www.vg.no/sport/ol-2022/ioc-krever-gratis-sprit-paa-stadion-og-cocktail-fest-med-kongen/a/23306598/

Well no wonder China and Russia work so well with the IOC. I'm sure they have no problem adhering to these standards.

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IOC originally demanded the technical manual to be kept restricted. However, that would have been in violation of Norwegian law regarding public access to government documents. In Norway,any citizen can in principle ask for any local or national government document. There are exceptions, of course, like medical records or matters of national security. Although these revelations further tainted the IOC in the public eye they were hardly decisive.

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Geez, I got confused. I thought I was reading the NFL's demands for Super Bowl host cities again. I always knew the IOC was a pampered bunch, I just never realized to what degree, I didn't realize snickerdoodles were a bargaining chip in the process or that traffic lights had to change at the snap of their fingers, these people are just insatiable.

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I don't see the part, though, over wanting free prostitutes, too. :-/

Apparently that is outlined in the agreement after the vote.

Insane. Smile at the front of the hotel. lol who do they think they are?

But...they're 'uniting' the world through sport...

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I read one of the best lines in quite a while, in an article I read yesterday:

"So China or Kazakhstan it is, the last two 'suckers' on earth willing to step up this carnival barker. One lucky nation will win. The other will host the 2022 Winter Olympics".

Lmfao

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Good for Norway. Despite the IOC's flustered fuming, the politicians honored the will of the people. That was the only moral and responsible decision they could make. The IOC had only themselves to blame. I'm sorry Norway found itself in the position of delivering the @slap in the face," but they've done it well and it was high time.

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