New Pyeongchang Candidate City logo, from the 강원도민일보.
Gangwon province's
Pyeongchang county (평창군) is one of the three applicants, and thus one of three finalists, for the 2018 Winter Olympics.
From the Korea Herald:
The race to host the 2018 Winter Olympics officially began after the International Olympic Committee selected on Tuesday the three candidate cities for the Games.
The IOC executive board chose PyeongChang in Gangwon Province, Annecy of France and Munich of Germany as the finalists during its two-day meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The IOC’s decision came as no surprise as the three cities were the only ones to have applied to host the Games. Having been accepted as official candidates, they will now focus on competing to grab more international attention until the balloting next year in Durban, South Africa.
PyeongChang, a popular winter sports resort located some 180 kilometers east of Seoul, lost previous bids for the 2010 and 2014 Olympic Games, and is now hoping that the third time is the charm.
Countless reporters, columnists, and bloggers have speculated, almost pointlessly, about
Pyeongchang's chances of getting its name called on July 6, 2011, including John Powers of the
Boston Globe who called it
the "obvious favorite":
After the Winter Games went to Europe in 2006 (Turin, Italy) and 2014 (Sochi, Russia), it’s unlikely that the IOC would return there for a third time in a dozen years, especially with an obvious favorite in Pyeongchang, which was runner-up for the last two Games, both times leading after the first ballot.
No Asian city has been the winter host since Nagano, Japan, in 1998, and with Tokyo losing out for the 2016 summer bid that went to Rio de Janeiro, it’s likely that the Lords of the Rings will look to the Far East.
Numbers for bids for the
2010 and
2014 games are available from Wikipedia. The Wikipedia article on
2018 bids points out what we read about a few months ago, the general lack of interest and participation in winter sports:
Some have criticized reliance on artificial snow and lack of winter sports tradition and interest in Korea, citing low attendance at recent sports championships held there.
In February we read about the government's plan to
invest in less-popular winter sports in order to gain more gold medals and, through the winning, attract more interest in those events.
An issue that often comes up on Korea-related blogs is sportsmanship and whether the lack of it shown by some South Korean athletes and citizens will reduce the chances of attracting future events. Examples include corruption at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, possible
cheating at the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup, the outrage at rulings against Koreans in the 2002 and
2004 Games, the protests and bomb threat against the Swiss Embassy and an attack on the FIFA website following
a World Cup loss in 2006, and, most recently, a bomb threat to the Australian embassy and
death threats to an Australian referee and his family during the 2010 Vancouver Games. Those are all valid concerns, and based on precedent it's right to question what will happen to referees and athletes when events go against South Korea in
Pyeongchang. It should be remembered, though, the last time the Olympics were held in Munich
12 people were murdered.
Let's hope the organizing committee comes stronger this year than it did at 2009's Seoul Snow Jam. From OhMyNews.
