Some Olympic tidbits

A few pieces picked up in the last few weeks regarding future Olympics as well as Olympic sports in general that I thought were kind of interesting.

One of the biggest gripes about watching winter sports has always been the broadcasts are not readily available everywhere. I subscribed to a web site that used to broadcast all the FIS events from around the world, with the exception of events here in the United States and Austria. There was a complicated rights issue involving FIS and other countries, which made things difficult at times.

However, there was a great deal of progress made since the end of the last winter season and that web site will no longer be the home to the alpine sports that I love to watch. Instead, all alpine events will be broadcast live on Peacock and/or NBC throughout the winter sports season. In the past, this was just the case for events in the US and Austria, but it was announced earlier today that all World Cup alpine events will be broadcast on the same outlet that does the Olympics (at least here in the United States).

I was excited to hear this. I remember back prior to COVID, NBC Sports Network used to regularly broadcast alpine races before that network shuttered for a time. It has been brought back over the last few years and I've had the chance to watch numerous events including swimming, gymnastics, figure skating and speed skating on television. And the kickoff alpine World Cup events are already set to record when they air this weekend.

The other notice that I saw was that the IOC has published the next steps toward selecting a host for the 2036 Summer Olympics. Between then and now we will see Summer Games in Los Angeles (2028) and Brisbane, Australia (2032) and Winter Games in the French Alps (2030) and Salt Lake City (2034). But the IOC has noted that by the end of the month they will not be accepting any more interested parties and will receive virtual presentations from parties that have expressed interest in November before the opening of strategic dialogue in March of next year. This means that a few parties will make a shortlist to go from the stage now of Continuous Dialogue to the focused Strategic Dialogue in anticipation of announcing a host city. That decision likely won't come until 2029.

The IOC also announced that parties that have been in continuous dialogue about possibly hosting in 2026 include Germany, Hungary, India, Qatar, Republic of Korea, South Africa and Türkiye. That is an interesting list to me. I expect that the Korean bid would include some of the facilities built for PyeongChang in 2018, but I don't know that for sure. A South African bid would aim toward being the first Olympics held on African soil (the Youth Olympics are happening next week in Dakar). Germany has hosted numerous Olympics, but the others (except Korea) would be first-time hosts if they are successful.

While this isn't any sort of breaking news, I found these bits of information interesting and I am looking forward to following along as the World Cup season begins and the Olympic process continues.

As noted a while back, I did submit my credential application for Los Angeles. We were told we'd know by the end of the year, though those deadlines change regularly for all sorts of reasons.



The IOC has released the next steps in the host selection for the 2036 Olympic Games. (IOC photo)

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