Quote:
Originally Posted by Roboman
It's sort of an old-timey thing - we share an Olympic ring and everything. But maybe that will change, now that Rio is hosting (though of course the rings won't change).
In any case, I'm very happy for Rio. That one guy who made hundreds of biased edits to the Rio bid's mammoth Wikipedia page will be pleased 
Official Robo predictions for the next 20 years:
2018: PyeongChang, South Korea
2020: Cape Town or Durban, South Africa
2022: Queenstown, New Zealand
2024: Paris, France
2026: Lake Placid, USA (as much as I'd love that joint US-Canada bid, it's not going to happen so soon)
2028: Tokyo, Japan (though this is sort of fuzzy, so who knows...if we don't go for 2026 we could get 2028) |
Expect to see the US Olympic Committee regroup quickly after this. Lake Placid will not get the Winter Olympics again, nor should it. There is no reason. It is not even close to the premier spot for winter sports in America and the Olympics need the draw/power/economic backing/security enforcement of bigger cities/areas these days.
I expect Tahoe and Denver (or somewhere in Colorado) to express interest in either the 2018 or 2022 games soon. SLC would love to host them again and would do a great job but it'd be hard to get them twice so quickly. Tahoe would make for a great Winter Olympics location. But as with everything in California, there exists too many nimbys to make anything happen. It's for that reason that San Francisco will have problems as well. SF should be our strongest summer olympics candidate but the people in the bay area will just flip over everything.
I think Norway has a higher chance of hosting a Winter Olympics sooner than either South Korea or New Zealand. Lillehammer is still looked upon as the modern model of what an olympics should be.
NYC2012 was just as serious a bid as Chicago by the way, and was seen by many as just as much a favorite. I don't think the problem is wanting to spread the games around, I think it is an anti American sentiment prevalent throughout the IOC now and the fact that America and whatever city is trying doesn't fully get behind their candidate city.
Personally, my dream American site for the Winter Olympics would be Jackson Hole.... that would just be gorgeous.