Olympics
Switzerland has emerged as a late potential candidate for the 2030 Winter Olympics. The Swiss Olympic Team announced on its social media channels that it is currently conducting a feasibility study in association with national winter sport associations, to establish whether the country could be host to the 2030, 2034 or even 2038 Winter Olympic Games.
For a while it looked like the Olympics might go to Salt Lake City, UT, by default, as no one seemed ready or interested to make a bid. In December 2022, the International Olympic Committee ‘IOC’ pushed back the date for making a decision regarding the host for the 2030 Winter Olympics, after several potential bidders dropped out off the bidding contest. Initially Barcelona, Spain, Sapporo, Japan and Salt Lake City, UT were deemed to make a bid to host 2030.
However, Barcelona, Spain, withdrew its bid as it could not come to an agreement on hosting the Games in the Pyrenees region, where most of the snow events would be held. Sapporo, Japan, decided to put its bid on ice, following the bribing scandal surrounding the Tokyo Summer Olympics. While Sapporo’s mayor wants to forge ahead with the 2030 bid, the Japanese Olympic Committee said, it would rather support a 2034 Sapporo bid. Likewise, Salt Lake City, UT, made it known that they would rather host the 2034 Winter Games, to avoid competing with the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games, but at one stage it looked like Salt Lake City may be the only potential host left.
Then in June 2023 Stockholm-Åre in Sweden emerged as a surprise bidder. Stockholm had originally bid for the 2026 Winter Games, but had lost out to Milan-Cortina, Italy. Swedish officials decided to re-investigate an Olympic bid and conducted a four-month feasibility study which focussed on using a lot of the existing infrastructure in line with the IOC’s shift towards sustainability.
In July this year, the French Alpine regions of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur announced their plan to bid for the 2030 Winter Games. Like Sweden, the French are planning on relying on their existing infrastructure from the 1992 Albertville Winter Games and align the games with a more environmentally sustainable vision. France has hosted the Winter Olympics three times previously: 1924 in Chamonix, 1968 in Grenoble, and 1992 in Albertville.
Under the Motto: “Switzerland 203X: The first Host Country ever – for the most sustainable Games ever”, the mountain nation could now be a potential contender for the 2030 Games, depending on the outcome of their feasibility study. The IOC had been pushing Switzerland to submit a bid for a while, but the reclusive Alpine nation had been reluctant to commit, as public support for hosting a Winter Olympic was low. There were several failed regional attempts in the past from the cantons Bern, Graubünden/Grischa and Valais/Wallis. Switzerland has a system of public voting (‘Volksentscheid’) for deciding a variety of political and community issues, and public support for the Olympic ambitions were disappointingly low, with negative votes between 54% and 77%.
The key difference in the “Switzerland 203X” initiative is that not a region or canton will bid for the Olympics but rather the country of Switzerland as a whole. This way, Switzerland hopes to maximize the use of existing infrastructures across the nation. St. Moritz has hosted the Olympic Winter Games twice, in 1928 and 1948, but 75 years have past since and they have for example disassembled the ski jumps. However, St. Moritz still boasts the only natural FIS approved bob track in the world and would be prime candidate for hosting sliding events. Ice skating events could be held in Davos or Lausanne, which have Olympic quality ice skating stadiums and Einsiedeln in central Switzerland has FIS level ski jumps.
While spreading Olympic Games across an entire country may seem unfathomable in other countries, Switzerland is a rather small country and can be traversed by car from one end to the other in about 6 hours east to west and 3 hours north to south, making the logistics entirely possible. Switzerland demonstrated in 2020 for the Youth Olympic Games how well the country can coordinated facilities across its nation. During the Lausanne Youth Olympics, events were held across all of Switzerland, as Lausanne does not possess any ski areas. Lausanne hosted the opening and closing ceremonies, ice skating and ice hockey events, while alpine events took place in St. Moritz, Leysin, Les Diablerets, Champery, Premanon and Le Brassus. While the Youth Olympics feature less events, a similar model could still be envisaged for the 2030, 2034 or 2038 Winter Olympic Games.
The Swiss Olympic Team is planning to finish the feasibility study in fall 2023 and then make an announcement regarding its potential bid to host future Winter Games. The country is hoping to rely on its existing experience in hosting large scale events. Aside from the Lausanne Youth Olympics, many Swiss ski areas are FIS World Cup venues and have the infrastructure and experience required to host large scale winter sport events. Veysonnaz for example hosted the Ski- und Snowboardcross Junior World Championships and St. Moritz will hold the 2025 FIS Freestyle World Championships.
It is great that the interest in hosting Winter Games is experiencing a second wind after a short lull and it is even better to see, that all the nations now seriously considering bidding are embracing sustainability at the center of their bids.
