Sapporo City announces suspension of bidding activities for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics What are the reasons for the failure of the bid?

Regarding the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, Sapporo City exchanged opinions with related organizations on the 19th, and officially announced the suspension of future bidding activities, stating that it is impossible to continue activities without predicting the timing of the bid.

Regarding the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, the IOC = International Olympic Committee has decided to unify the candidate sites for the 2030 Games in the Alps region of France and the 34th Games in Salt Lake City in the United States, and to prioritize dialogue with Switzerland for the 38th Games, and the bid for the Games that Sapporo City has been aiming for is no longer in sight.

Against this backdrop, Mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto and Hokkaido Governor Naomichi Suzuki participated in a hotel in Sapporo on the 19th, as well as representatives of local economic organizations and related organizations such as the JOC = Japan Olympic Committee, and exchanged opinions on future policies.

At the outset, the person in charge of the JOC proposed that the discussion should proceed in the direction of suspending the bidding activities, and the participants expressed their opinions in favor of the bidding, such as "the suspension is unavoidable," and also expressed the opinion that they would like the bidding activities to be resumed at the right time.

In response to this, Mayor Akimoto decided to suspend the bidding activities that had been carried out since 2014, saying that it was impossible to continue the activities without predicting the timing of the bid.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Mayor Akimoto said, "If we withdraw or blank the paper, there will be no possibility of holding the event in the future, so we have decided to suspend it.

Factors for the failure of the bid: "Lack of widespread public support" and "Misjudgment of the selection process"

The biggest reason for the failure of Sapporo City's bid to host the Winter Olympics and Paralympics was the lack of widespread public support.

The city officially announced its bid for the Games in 2014, and in a survey of 1,2026 citizens at the time, the number of people in favor greatly exceeded the opposition, and the city initially aimed for the 4 Games.

However, four years later, in 2018, the Hokkaido Eastern Iburi Earthquake occurred, and in light of the impact of the disaster, the city changed its policy to bid for the 2030 Games, and the activities were prolonged.

Since 2020, the spread of the new coronavirus has led to the cancellation of dialogue projects with citizens, and activities to expand support have not progressed as expected.

Since July last year, corruption and bid-rigging scandals surrounding the Tokyo Olympics have been discovered, and the public's distrust of the Games has increased, and bidding activities have been suspended.

As a result, the public's understanding of the vision and plan for the Games did not deepen, and it was not possible to broaden the support that is most important for the bid.

Another factor in the failure of the bid was that there was a major misunderstanding of the process of selecting the host city promoted by the IOC = International Olympic Committee.

In October, the city of Sapporo and the JOC announced that they would abandon their bid for the 7 Games and aim for 10 years or later, which they believed would give them time to review their activities and plans to build momentum.

However, immediately after that, the IOC decided to simultaneously unify the two candidate sites for the 2030 and '34 Games, and to prioritize dialogue with Switzerland for the '2030 Games, and the bid for Sapporo became completely uncertain.

The IOC is concerned about the impact of climate change such as global warming on winter sports, and has been taking a strong stance of securing a venue as soon as possible to make the Games sustainable, and it can be said that the failure of Sapporo City and the JOC to fully grasp such intentions was also a major blow.

The faint sense of anticipation that remains after the bidding "suspension"

The fact that Sapporo City decided to "suspend" its bidding activities rather than "withdraw" shows the faint sense of expectation that remains for the bid after the 2038 Games.

One of the reasons for this is weather conditions.

In recent years, the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games have become an issue due to the global shortage of snow due to global warming, and the number of candidate sites with stable weather conditions for holding the Games is decreasing.

A research team centered on Canadian universities predicts that by the end of this century, Sapporo may be the only city that will be able to provide a safe competition environment among the past Winter Olympics venues.

For this reason, the IOC = International Olympic Committee has begun to consider holding the Winter Games on a rotating basis at multiple candidate sites with stable weather conditions, and if it is realized, Sapporo City will be one of the important candidate sites.

Carl Stoss, chairman of the IOC's Committee on Future Venues, also spoke highly of the weather conditions in Sapporo, and bidders expressed hope that Sapporo City's dominance would increase in the future.

In addition, according to JOC = Japan Olympic Committee officials, the 1 Games are also a possibility.

The IOC has said that it will prioritize dialogue with Switzerland for the selection process, but the deadline for this will be 2038.

Switzerland's bid plan is said to have a lot of room for debate, such as the dispersion of competition venues, and if there is no prospect of resolving the problem by the deadline, there is a view that the chance is not zero if Sapporo City is prepared to run as a candidate.

February is a major turning point

Initially, Sapporo City was seen as the frontrunner for the 2030 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Despite the impact of the new coronavirus, the IOC = International Olympic Committee has a lot of trust in Japan's high management ability to survive the Tokyo Olympics without major disruptions, and at a press conference in December 2021 after the Tokyo Games, President Bach said that Sapporo City's bid plan "has everything" and highly appreciated it.

Subsequently, a series of scandals at the Tokyo Games came to light, and distrust of the Games, which involved huge amounts of public money, spread, and support for the bid plummeted among the citizens of Sapporo.

Even so, the IOC's expectations for Sapporo "did not break," officials said.

The IOC's Executive Board decided to postpone the decision on the host city of the 12 Games from the October General Assembly as originally planned, but according to the official, "the ostensible reason was to consider how to deal with climate change, but it was the 'favorite' It was clear that Sapporo, which was a candidate, had given it time to increase its approval rating from citizens and others."

However, it is said that the relationship of trust between Sapporo City and the IOC, which can be described as a "honeymoon," suddenly collapsed in February.

According to the officials, JOC = Japan Olympic Committee President Yasuhiro Yamashita and Seiko Hashimoto, who served as president of the Tokyo Organizing Committee, visited President Bach in Lausanne, Switzerland and proposed that they would like to switch the bidding activity to the Games after 12. It means that he has left the room.

In addition, IOC officials who were present also criticized the proposal, saying that it was "impossible" and did not accept it.

In October, the city of Sapporo and the JOC announced a change in their policy on bidding for the 2030 Games, but immediately after that, the IOC General Assembly approved the decision to decide on the host city of the two Games in 10 and 2 at the same time. The candidate sites were unified in the Alps region of France and Salt Lake City in the United States, respectively.

From this behind-the-scenes, it can be said that February was a major turning point.

Sapporo City and JOC What are their future activities?

When asked about the prospect of the resumption of bidding activities, Mayor Akimoto of Sapporo City explained, "The IOC = International Olympic Committee is conducting various studies on the future of the Games, so we cannot enter into specific bidding activities unless such things are clarified to a certain extent."

He also expressed his intention to examine the activities to date and explain them to the public in order to explore the possibility of bidding in the future, saying, "I would like to receive a third-party opinion on how the bidding activities should have proceeded, after organizing the information we have."

On the other hand, the JOC = Japan Olympic Committee will prioritize activities to restore trust in the Olympic Games, which was lost due to the scandal surrounding the Tokyo Games, and will examine the process and information gathering based on this bidding activity.

On top of that, we plan to explore opportunities to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in our own country in the future, and also consider new ways to select candidate sites in Japan, such as cooperation in multiple cities.

Managing Director Ogata: "I want to take this as a new step"

Mitsugu Ogata, Executive Director of the JOC = Japan Olympic Committee, who attended the opinion exchange meeting online on the 19th, said, "It is unfortunate that the bidding activities have been suspended, but we will not look backwards and take it as a new step, and we must make further efforts to foster the Olympic Movement."

On top of that, he said that the suspension of bidding activities was not a single factor, but also due to the coronavirus pandemic and a series of scandals at the Tokyo Games. It may be that the value and fun of the Games were not sufficiently conveyed to the public before and after the Tokyo Games. There were some things that we should reflect on, but I don't think it was a question of what was wrong," he said, adding that he would like to verify what we are going to do in the future and prepare a report on the bidding activities.