The IOC recently announced the finalists for the 2022 Games: Oslo, Beijing and Almaty...Kazakhstan, that is (in case like me you were like, where?). Part of me is kind of pleased the IOC would consider a country like Kazakhstan that has never before had the money nor infrastructure to host a Games.
But another part of me agrees completely with this really great point Slate made about the whole thing...the pickins for the site of the 2022 Games are slim. Oslo might withdraw, and Kazakhstan is "not ready for primetime," leaving only Beijing, which hosted the 2008 Summer Games oh so few years ago. No one is really clamoring for the honor because it has proven in the last decade to be more of a headache for the host country than it is an actual honor.
I'm sure in the past one could make arguments that the countries and cities that ended up hosting the Games (both summer and winter) may have curried a little favor here or there, maybe slipped some money in certain pockets to win the bid, but this time around, it doesn't smell that way to me.
One of my bucket list items is to attend an Olympic Games I was still a twinkle in someone's eye back in 1980 when the Games were in Lake Placid, otherwise an army could not have held me back from going up there. Maybe by 2022 I'll have a chance?
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