Featured image – “Hackney Looting” by pure evil
The IOC announced sweeping changes to the Olympic Games yesterday, including what they are calling a “more affordable bidding process,” making the system cheaper and more flexible to attract future candidates — including the option of holding events outside the host city or country. The new allowances are most certainly a response to the recent 2022 Winter Games bidding debacle, whereby all of the IOC’s preferred hosts have been removing themselves from consideration one-by-one. By now, Sweden, Poland, Ukraine, Switzerland and Germany have all withdrawn from the bidding process, most citing overwhelming public opposition to hosting the Games. Currently, the IOC has just two candidates interested in hosting the 2022 Games – Almaty, Kazakhstan and Beijing, China.
Kazakhstan is an Oil State which ranks 140th out of 177 countries in the world in corruption, as measured by transparency.org. Human Rights Watch notes that Kazakhstan maintains a poor human rights record, and that “torture remains common in places of detention.” Kazakhstan also finished last in 11 of the 14 categories the IOC uses to score bids. Beijing just hosted the Summer Games six years ago, when they displaced 1.5 million people and spent an estimated $43 billion.
While surely not the IOC’s top choice, it is widely speculated the 2022 Games will be hosted in Beijing. In those countries where the people have been consulted, they have overwhelmingly voted against hosting the Olympics. It is perhaps only in autocratic, non-democratic states like China that the IOC will find willing hosts.
Read about the changes the IOC made to requirements for Olympic hosts here: