Beijing to host 2022 Winter Olympics beating Almaty

Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun called China’s winter, “spectacular”.

Apart from beating rival Almaty, Kazakhstan in what could be considered as a neck-and-neck bid for the honor to host the 2020 event, Beijing also attained yet another notable achievement – becoming the first city to serve as host in both the Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics in this century.

“This year we are celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the IOC’s presence in Lausanne”, IOC president Thomas Bach told reporters.

The Chinese athletes competing in 2015 LA Special Olympics on Saturday exalted Beijing’s success.

“Whatever the IOC wants or says, the message heard loud and clear in Beijing is that human rights and Tibet don’t matter”.

Beijing’s mountain events would be held at venues in Yanqing and Zhangjiakou, 60 and 140 kilometres (40 and 90 miles) away from the city. “China’s record on press freedom and human rights is not one that deserves to be rewarded”.

China’s humanitarian issues can be traced back to the forced evictions during the 2008 Olympics, and recently to its “abusive, unaccountable domestic security forces”, reported CNN.

While Rio scrambles to make up lost time in its building for the 2016 Olympics, and Tokyo is embroiled in a stadium drama, the allure of a megacity with a cast-iron financial guarantee proved irresistible.

“This gives Beijing the wrong signal that the whole world no longer cares about the human rights situation in China… and this is the worst time to give Beijing such a signal”, said Ho, who demonstrated against last month’s mass arrest of human rights lawyers by mainland Chinese authorities.

The tight margin caught most IOC members by surprise.

People wave Chinese national flags as they cheer after the IOC announced Beijing as the victor city … “China has played a significant role in the development of sport in Asia and we know that they will deliver a great Games”. They hosted the Summer Olympics in 2008.

“By bidding for the Winter Games we showed the world the incredible progress that Kazakhstan has made since its independence”.

In a reflection of the lack of interest in winter sports among many Chinese, the celebrations of yesterday’s announcement were muted in Beijing.

Beijing was seen by IOC members as a safe, reliable choice that also offered vast commercial opportunities in a new winter sports market of more than 300 million people in northern China.

But after Russian Federation spent more than $50 billion to stage the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Oslo, Stockholm, Krakow in Poland and Lviv in Ukraine all withdrew because of cost fears and local politics.

Under the slogan “Keeping it Real”, the bid had concentrated on Almaty’s abundant natural snowfall – a weakness for Beijing – and the city’s compactness, with all venues within a 30-kilometre (18-mile) radius.

Now that Beijing has made history as the first city to win hosting rights for both the Summer and Winter Olympics, the city has a lot of challenges to overcome in time for the 2022 Winter Games.