Toronto Strong Contender For Olympic Games - IOC President

[nfitz]

That is too close to the the current games

Summer and Olympic games haven't really been an issue in the past. The USA got the summer games in 1996, and the winter games only 6 years later in 2002.

the IOC doesn't like to repeat in the same or similar timezone it seems.

Why do you say that - I don't think that's true? The 1992 Winter games in France, 1992 Summer games in Spain, and the 1994 Winter games in Norway were all in the same time zone (Central European Time ... I suppose technically the Summer games were in Central European Daylight Time). More recently 2004 games in Greece were only 1 timezone off the 2006 games in Italy. Toronto is 2 timezones off Rio.

 

[jn_12]

Considering the TV revenue the IOC gets from the North American networks when the games are held here, I can think of a billion+ reasons the IOC wouldn't care if the games were within a time zone or two of most of the USA, with most of the day time events being in prime time in Europe.

 

[afransen]

US not bidding for 2020? I'd say this is about our best chance. Rio takes South Africa out of contention. I could see maybe Paris and Tokyo being competitors. Toronto could likely beat both.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

With Bejing 2008 (Asia Pacific), London 2012 (Europe), Rio 2016 (South) all markets seem to have been hit so I'm sure that the IOC would like to return to the profitable North American market. It will have been 24 years between summer games in NA (Atlanta). So it does seem odd that the USOC has decided not to bid, perhaps they realized something that everyone else hasn't. That the IOC will be looking to put a games in Africa soon.

 

[Hipster Duck]

I personally think that Vancouver is going to be the last Olympics Canada ever hosts. By 2020, we will start to see Olympics being hosted in places that would have never even been contenders a decade ago; it's much more likely that the IOC would give a second Olympics to a Chinese city within 12 years than another Canadian city within 10.

 

[jn_12]

Well the key difference is that it would be a summer games rather than a winter games, and the two are entirely different entities with different levels of exposure. I'd wager most of the world doesn't realize the Winter games are on right now. Just looking at the leading newspaper of many countries, it doesn't seem to be on the radar unless the country is an active participant (and even that's no guarentee).

Also, no one seemed to care that Toronto was bidding only a few years after Calgary hosted the game. In fact, the Toronto bid would have won if not for the behind the scenes antics that allowed Atlanta to win. I understand what you're getting at with the rise of previous non-contenders, but I don't think it's as imminent as you think. Considering FIFA has changed it's rotation policy because it was fearful of having to put up with another nightmare like South Africa has been and what Brazil could be, I think the IOC's mindset can't be much different.

 

[andomano]

I'd wager most of the world doesn't realize the Winter games are on right now. Just looking at the leading newspaper of many countries

Is it that they don't realize, or that they don't care. The Winter and Summer games are completely two different animals.
Even on TV, NBC has done and continues to do a terrible job covering the games, especially when comparing to the way the Canadian networks have.

 

[jn_12]

well I'm sure they "realize". It was perhaps the wrong word to use there because it'd be impossible for everyone not covering the games to not they're on. You're right that it is because they don't care. Which is why it makes no difference to most people in the world where these games are being held. To them, if Toronto got the 2020 games, they wouldn't have any sort of feeling as though they had just finished experiencing an Olympics in Canada.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Staging the Summer Olympics has become so demanding that I'm afraid a medium-sized developed country with an Anglo-Libertarian mindset toward infrastructure investment and ceremonial largesse doesn't have a chance. I am not saying that our mentality is necessarily a bad thing - perhaps it is the spirit of the Olympic games itself, being a dinosaur relic of turn-of-the-century imperial Europe, that has it all wrong. In that vein, don't let the choice of Rio fool you. These are the same people who built Brasilia.

The other thing the Brazilians have, which we don't, is 180 million firecely patriotic people who will back the games as a national, rather than municipal, endeavour. One can't really say the same about our regionally-fractured country where most Canadians outside of Toronto will grumble about the $15 billion, or whatever, that will have to be lavished upon their most hated city.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

The IOC has so far has cared little about the 'arms race' of hosting requirements (endlessly rising expectations of security, facilities, infrastructure, etc. that invariably couple with urban/national improvement schemes) that more and more BRIC-type countries seem willing to burden themselves with. With all that London's doing, it's a sign that there isn't really a 'safe' city anymore that would host a 'sustainable' Games, so the IOC has every reason to build its brand and legacy in a place like China, Brazil, India, or up-and-comers like Turkey, Malaysia, etc. Just the thought of what India would do and build for the Olympics is almost frightening. These trends could change in 20-30 years, though.

The World Cup requires different things than the Olympics...for instance, with an Olympics you only need to spruce up one city (sometimes one city plus a nearby ski resort), and you have immense support and guidance from all the sporting federations, yet at the same time you have a fair amount of flexibility in terms of site locations, the scale of infrastructure, the cultural components, etc.

I do think I'll live to see at least one more Summer and Winter Games held in Canada, but it's certainly possible that we'll see a Kuala Lumpur 2020 or a Buenos Aires 2032 or even a Tehran 2026 before Toronto gets to host. It's easy to be cynical and believe Toronto/Canada would continue to lose hosting opportunities for reasons other than bid strength, but the bids do matter...the selection process is actually quite good at weeding out poor bids and preventing hosting fiascos. We can't know what geo-political and economic circumstances or the state of the IOC will be in 30 years and for all we know Toronto might *win* a Games for the kind of reasons we think influenced choices like Atlanta or Beijing. Scandal and politics and so on might work in our favour despite a poor bid, and no one in Toronto would complain about that.

 

[nfitz]

Staging the Summer Olympics has become so demanding that I'm afraid a medium-sized developed country with an Anglo-Libertarian mindset toward infrastructure investment and ceremonial largesse doesn't have a chance.

LOL ... a reasonable argument ... until you start looking at who HAS won summer games so far this century. Two of the five are England and Australia; I can't imagine 2 more comparable countries in terms of medium-sized developed countries with an Anglo-Libertarian mindset (well England tends to go a bit more totalitarian than Libetaratrian ... however). And a third nation was Greece ... if a smaller less developed country like Greece can (barely) pull it offer ... and we couldn't?

 

[Hipster Duck]

LOL ... a reasonable argument ... until you start looking at who HAS won summer games so far this century. Two of the five are England and Australia; I can't imagine 2 more comparable countries in terms of medium-sized developed countries with an Anglo-Libertarian mindset (well England tends to go a bit more totalitarian than Libetaratrian ... however). And a third nation was Greece ... if a smaller less developed country like Greece can (barely) pull it offer ... and we couldn't?

Sydney is a fair comparison to Toronto, but it is also in a country with a strong Olympic legacy (46 medals in the last Olympics compared to Canada's 18) and after waiting 48 years to host, they will not get a chance to host again.

London is a world capital of 12 million and perhaps the last city in Western Europe that will have a shot of hosting for a while. London is larger than Britain and Britain ain't no slouch.

Athens was another EU effort...and not one that they will be willing to make ever again.

 

[jn_12]

Sydney is a fair comparison to Toronto, but it is also in a country with a strong Olympic legacy (46 medals in the last Olympics compared to Canada's 18) and after waiting 48 years to host, they will not get a chance to host again.

Number of medals won means little.
Australia did their own "Own the Podium" type of program leading up to the 2000 games. In 88 they had 14 medals (we had 10), in 1992, the year before they got the 2000 games,they had 27 medals and finished 10th, one place ahead of Canada with 18 medals. And they had 41 in '96 compared to Canada's 22. But those numbers don't tell the whole story. if you consider that we are primarily a winter sport nation, we have more combined medals (summer and winter) than Australia does. Australia is lucky in that all of their best athletes compete in the summer, whereas all of ours are mostly winter (and mostly hockey players). So it's a bit misleading to say we don't have any sort of Olympic legacy based on summer medal totals, because if anything we're greater participants in the Olympics because we spread our medals out over the winter and summer games.
Sorry if this doesn't make sense... I'm on some pain meds lol.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Until the 90s we were not even a Winter sport power - what Canada has done in recent decades is excel at all the new/niche sports. This is where most of our winter medals come from (and many of our summer medals, too). Snowboarding, freestyle skiing, short track, curling, skeleton, more and more women's events...that's why we're won so many winter medals recently and why the money we pour into certain sports pays off. As we're seeing in Vancouver, though, other countries are catching up and spending money in these new events to challenge us. It's the same with the U.S.

Australia wins almost half its medals in swimming, a sport that has oodles of medals up for grabs and where even a handful of elite athletes can win many medals. Canada has rather few elite athletes in sports where long careers can net them 5-10 or more medals or multiple medals at one games. If hockey and curling were open to the best 12 or 24 teams in the world and not limited to one per country, we could very easily sweep all hockey and curling 12 medals. Between hockey and curling, that means almost our entire base of amateur athletes is competing for only 4 medals combined. One swimmer or biathlete could win that many medals. If we had amazing runners or amazing cross country skiiers, we could rack up dozens more medals to add to the random assortment of summer medals we win and to our dominance in new winter events. However, we can't possibly develop that kind of sporting program for throwing a few millions at racking up medals in niche events that see little international competition...it requires far more money and a cultural shift to build a national pool of runners or skiiers. We don't have Australia's swimming culture or Scandinavia's skiing culture or the U.S.'s university track culture. Maybe we'll emerge as a long term power in all the ice events.

 

[urbandreamer]

It makes sense that no American cities would bid--they're mostly bankrupt, so why let debt spiral out of control?