The 2022 Winter Olympics will be held in Beijing.
The decision was just announced by the IOC meeting in Kuala Lumpur where the host for the results ceremony was Britain’s famous triple jumper Jonathan Edwards.
The results came after a paper ballot was needed when the electronic one failed.
Beijing will be the first city to host a winter and summer Olympic Games.
Unusually there were only two candidates Beijing in China and Almaty, Kazakhstan, meaning that the decision was guaranteed to see the third Olympic Games in Asia in a row, after the next winter Olympics in 2018 ion Pyeongchang, South Korea and the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo.
With the last Winter Olympics being staged in Sochi on the eastern extreme of Europe, it also marks the third successive move East for the Games.
The lack of interest among European and North American countries in staging a Winter Olympics is a concern for the IOC. Four different candidates from Europe who had originally expressed an interest in staging the 2022 Games all dropped out, in several cases as a result of public referenda on whether to stage the Games, largely due to perceived costs and in some cases excessive IOC demands. The IOC have vociferously argue that benefits outweigh costs.
Both 2022 candidates have very short winter sports histories in terms of Alpine events. China has rapidly expanded its ski infrastructure over the last 15 years, in Kazakhstan it is more like five years.
Both needed to spend a great deal on infrastructure ahead of the Games. Both have low natural snowfall stats but typically low temperatures meaning it would be a bonanza for snowmaking equipment manufacturers whoever won. Kazakhstan has high mountains, for Beijing the ski centres, about 100 miles from the capital, can just about offer the required vertical for a Men’s downhill course. Other European and North American ski resort infrastructure planners sand equipment manufacturers would benefit from either country winning too.
The IOC also decided that the 2020 Youth Olympic Winter Games would be staged in Lausanne in Switzerland, beating in Brasov in Romania.
