Beijing vows to host sustainable Olympics

But IOC president Thomas Bach, who pushed for and got a unanimous rubber-stamp approval of Agenda 2020 at last December’s extraordinary session in Monaco, declared then that the starting gate was closed.

“We feel utterly ashamed of such a notorious human rights record, which not only contradicts Beijing’s own promises, but also severely tarnishes the reputation and spirit of the Olympic Games”, they added.

“Legacy is everything”, former National Basketball Association star and Beijing bid team member Yao Ming said.

The bid team, however, said Beijing 2022 had nothing to do with propaganda. If Beijing wins, the athletes will travel up to 160km to reach its venues. This is especially critical for the IOC after Russian Sochi’s unimaginable costs, which turned out to be a way over estimate and which made a number of candidates withdraw from the bidding race.

Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation spent more than US$51 billion on the last winter games in Sochi, and while democratic South Korea will host the next, there are human rights concerns over both candidates for 2022.

“At a time when the Chinese people are looking forward to a successful and exciting Winter Olympics, a few people with ulterior motives are politicising the Games”, foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.

Did he ever think he’d be singing the praises of a Winter Olympics bid for Beijing?

However, the hosting of the Winter Olympic Games in Almaty is not going to be expensive, according to the press release from the prime minister’s press servie.

Beijing has denied claims that the recent detentions of human rights lawyers are part of a political campaign.

Beijing, which hosted the 2008 Summer Games, would become the first city to host both the summer and winter events.

The controversy surrounding Beijing’s Winter Olympics bid comes amid heightened scrutiny of worldwide sporting events in authoritarian countries. That is why it has the full backing of our Government, who has guaranteed that any shortfall in the cost will be met. This includes the use of Kazakhstan’s $75 billion sovereign wealth fund if required.

The 22-year-old Ten was up at 5 a.m. training at an ice rink in a suburban shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur. Even Vancouver had cherry trees blooming during the 2010 Olympics and had to airlift snow to ski areas in Whistler.

Rights groups have also criticized Kazakhstan, the only other now available choice for the IOC.

The ski slopes are only some 30 km (19 Michigan.) outside the city and the natural snow is not lacking on the high peaks of Central Asia, thus potentially making the Kazakh option the big surprise if the IOC prefers more compact games and more pleasing esthetics.

One day before Friday’s big decision, many see Beijing as a slight favorite, due to its greater influence within the IOC and its more extensive experience with large sports events, including the 2008 Summer Olympics and next month’s world track and field championships. The second-largest former Soviet oil producer after Russian Federation, Kazakhstan bid for the 2014 Winter Olympics but failed to make it past the first round and hopes that winning the vote this time will help develop businesses beyond the energy sector as oil prices fall.

Kazakhstan’s woes have largely been rooted in state clampdowns on media, activism and criticism, as well as violence and discrimination against its LGBT community.

Highlighting the cases, an open letter signed initially by around 40 lawyers, students, professors, activists and writers within China and elsewhere and which has now become an online petition urges IOC members to reject Beijing’s bid, saying China is facing a “human rights crisis with a scale of violations that is unprecedented since 2008”.

Both countries have human rights records that have been condemned by activist groups.

“We’ve already seen one Olympic Games fuel human rights abuses in China, and the environment in 2015 is significantly worse than it was in 2008″, Minky Worden, the group’s global initiatives director, warned.