Stockholm drops its bid for Winter Olympics 2022

Stockholm has dropped its bid to host the Winter Olympics 2022, Tengrinews reports citing RIA Novosti. For Kazakhstan this means one competitor less. The Mayor of the Swedish capital city Sten Nordin explained that the decision was made for financial reasons. "Unfortunately we don‘t think it is realistic to file a bid. It is always nicer to say yes than no, but it is in our mandate to make tough decisions," the centre-right mayor Sten Nordin from the Moderate Party said. “Arranging a Winter Olympics would mean a big investment in new sports facilities, for example for the bobsleigh and luge,” the Moderate party said in a statement, ”There isn’t any need for that type of that kind of facility after an Olympics.” Now the International Olympic Committee has to consider five applicant cities for hosting the Winter Olympics 2022. Almaty (Kazakhstan), Beijing (China), Krakow (Poland), Lviv (Ukraine) and Oslo (Norway) have declared their intention to bid for hosting of the Winter Olympics. The German city of Munich also had an intention to participate in the bidding. But the municipal authorities gave up the idea to compete for the 2022 Winter Olympics hosting after most of the city's residents voted against the idea in a referendum. Kazakhstan's Almaty was the first city to submit its application to bid for hosting of the Winter Olympics 2022 on August 16, 2013. According to the preliminary calculations, Kazakhstan's expenses on hosing of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Almaty are expected to exceed $5 billion. The IOC Executive Board will review the bids from all the applicant cities in July 2014 and then select the candidate cities. The host city will be selected one year later, on 31 July 2015, at the 127th IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur.