The earliest the Summer Games could return is 2036, and the
favorite could be the world’s most populous country — not China, as you might
expect, but India.
India’s population is expected to overtake China’s 1.4
billion in the next decade, and it is lobbying for the western city of
Ahmedabad to be the host city for 2036, with events elsewhere, including New
Delhi, the capital.
“India is in a race for hosting 2036,” Narinder Batra,
president of the Indian Olympic Committee, told The Associated Press. He
offered few other details.
In a show of support, the IOC has scheduled the annual
meeting of its full membership for next year in the western Indian metropolis
of Mumbai. It’s a signal the courting has begun.
Delivering the pitch: Indian IOC member Nita Ambani, who is
married to Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of India’s multinational conglomerate
Reliance Industries. The family fortune has been estimated at $100 billion.
As it did with China, the IOC can envision India as a new
frontier that will yield deep-pocketed sponsors, television rights deals and
generous government support.
Departing Asia means returning to familiar terrain: the
Summer Games in Paris in 2024, the 2026 Winter Games in Milan-Cortina, and the
2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Brisbane is also lined up for the 2032 Summer
Olympics, a return to Australia 32 years after Sydney.
Brisbane is certain to add cricket to its sports menu and,
of course, it would stay in place for India, where the sport has the world’s
most fervent following.
The Asia focus started with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a
grand coming-out party that many hoped would change China. Instead, China used
to Games to change how it was viewed.
The Asia run enriched the IOC with lucrative billion-dollar
sponsorship deals with China’s Alibaba and Japan’s Toyota, put down roots in
the world’s most populous continent and featured a return to South Korea 30
years after the 1988 Seoul Olympics were credited with helping to usher in
democracy.
Asia has also generated consistently bad public relations
for the IOC. This includes a state-sponsored doping scandal from the 2014 Sochi
Winter Olympics that lingers and surfaced again with allegations in Beijing
against Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva.
There was IOC vote-buying linked to the award of the Tokyo
Olympics, which forced the resignation of the head of Japan’s Olympic
Committee, Tsunekazu Takeda, and a diplomatic boycott of the just-finished
Beijing Games centered on human rights abuses that also dogged Beijing in 2008.
Add in the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. This was another
nontraditional stop that caused problems. It saw the organizing committee face
bankruptcy and Carlos Nuzman, the head of the committee, convicted of
corruption, money laundering and tax evasion. The former IOC member is
appealing.
“The IOC I think is viewed as a villain globally at this
time, and they have to do something to change their image,” said Robert Baade,
a sports economist at Lake Forest College outside Chicago. ”I’m not sure that’s
going to happen at any time soon.”
Baade is the co-author of “Going for Gold: The Economics of
the Olympics,” a study that looks at the costs and benefits of the Games.
“It’s these little things, the five-star hotels, the
elitism, the privilege that the IOC displays — and its eurocentrism,” Baade
added.
Christophe Dubi, the Olympic Games’ executive director,
acknowledged India has expressed strong interest, but declined to name other countries
that have. Several Chinese cities have been mentioned as possibilities, along
with Jakarta, Indonesia, Seoul and others.
“We have to respect that some are speaking confidentially to
us because the public authorities are not fully on board, or sometimes
governments are interested but it’s not the right timing,” Dubi said.
The IOC no longer runs a wide-open bidding process, instead
selecting cities in which it has interest — and vice versa. It puts the
selection in the hands of the IOC leadership rather than with IOC members. The
2036 host is unlikely to be picked until after the next IOC presidential
election in 2025.
The other return to Asia could come with the 2030 Winter
Olympics, where Sapporo, Japan — the 1972 Winter host — is probably the favorite.
Also in the mix could be Vancouver, Salt Lake City and a
Spanish bid, perhaps from Barcelona.
The Japanese news agency Kyodo, citing unidentified sources,
has reported that Sapporo and the IOC are in talks and a decision could come
before the end of the year. The city has put the cost at $2.4 billion to $2.6
billion.
The IOC owes Japan a favor after the one-year delay of the
2020 Olympics cost organizers an added $2 billion. Dubi would not confirm any
of this but said the IOC was lucky to have Japan and China organizing the last
two Olympics in the middle of the pandemic.
“I think we were very fortunate to have them as partners,”
Dubi said. “I don’t say that others could not have done it. But if you had to
pick two countries where it was always doable and where you wouldn’t have
doubts that they could pull it off — it’s those two.” -AP
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