Calgary’s great year continues.
Fresh off being named the world’s fourth-most livable city, and home to a really awesome YMCA, but minus points for the October snowstorm, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced yesterday that Calgary is on a shortlist of three cities to host the 2026 Winter Olympics.
The other two cities remaining are Stockholm, Sweden and a joint bid by Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. The Turkish city of Erzurum is the most recent casualty of the bidding process.
Amusingly, Calgary might not even want the games. Calgarians will be asked for their input on the matter during a plebiscite (direct vote) on November 13th. Calgary last hosted the Winter Olympics in 1988, again beating out a Swedish city and Cortina d’Ampezzo. With Canada failing to register a gold medal during the ’88 Games, the Calgary Saddledome will be the most memorable reminder of an event dominated by the communist nations of the Soviet Union and East Germany.
Proponents of the Calgary Winter Olympics will hope some of the lasting infrastructure of ’88 can convince the IOC to hand Canada its fourth Olympic torch (Montreal ’76, Calgary ’88, and Vancouver ’10). This bodes well in light of the IOC’s ‘New Norms’ initiative, which is a set of 118 reforms that aims to reduce the financial burden for host cities. If only Sochi had a time machine…
The final vote to determine which city will host the 2026 Olympics will be held in September 2019.