Swiss Government Will Support 2038 Winter Olympics Bid

(Bloomberg) — Switzerland’s government pledged its support for a local bid for the 2038 Winter Olympics, which vows to use only existing facilities, spread the games across the whole country and draw funding mainly from the private sector.

The International Olympic Committee invited Switzerland to a so-called privileged dialogue, meaning the nation can be awarded the games in 2027 without having to compete against other hosts, the government said in a statement on Friday. The Olympics are “a great opportunity for the country,” it added.

“This won’t be an instance of megalomania,” Swiss President Viola Amherd told reporters in Bern. “It should be games that suit us in Switzerland — that are modest and yet beautiful and inspiring.”

Switzerland’s sporting federations last year backed a local bid for a low-cost $1.6 billion proposal for the 2030 or 2034 Games only to have the IOC settle on the French Alps and then Salt Lake City for those two editions of the Games, both of which have previously hosted the Olympics.

Though Switzerland has been host to the IOC since 1915 and the Swiss resort of St. Moritz is credited with inventing winter tourism, local skepticism has sabotaged at least three previous bids for the Winter Games. St. Moritz hosted the Games twice but the last time was in 1948.  

When another bid surfaced in 2013 to host the 2022 Games in Graubunden, it was narrowly rejected by wary citizens. A bid for the 2026 Games was again rebuffed by the same canton in 2017 and a year later, a rival effort in the canton of Valais was also rejected.

“It is very important that the population is included in the process” for the new Swiss bid, Amherd said. “We only want to host games which the people want.”

The 2038 project has won some popular support because it’s intended as a countrywide endeavour with no single canton shouldering the burden alone. As the IOC urges bidders to rein in costs, the Swiss have pledged no new construction and to hold events like long-track speedskating, for which there are no venues in Switzerland, in a neighboring country. 

That contrasts with Milan-Cortina, co-hosts of the 2026 Winter Games. Organizers have decided to build a new $100 million sliding track for luge, bobsleigh and skeleton events, much to the dismay of the IOC, because Italy’s deputy PM pledged that Italy couldn’t host an Olympics in which events took place outside Italian soil. 

(Updates with Amherd from third paragraph.)

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