A Field of Eight Is Vying for 2010 Winter Games

Eight cities are in the running for the 2010 Winter Games, the International Olympic Committee announced Tuesday, among them Vancouver, Canada, perhaps the strongest contender in the field and one that--if selected--would likely doom the chances of the United States playing host to the Summer Games in 2012.

Besides Vancouver, the cities are: Andorra La Vella, Andorra; Bern, Switzerland; Harbin, China; Jaca, Spain; Pyeongchang, South Korea; Salzburg, Austria; and Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, which played host to the 1984 Winter Games.

The IOC’s policy-making Executive Board will trim the list at a meeting Aug. 28-29. It’s up to the IOC to determine how many will then remain as formal “candidate” cities; the eight are now known as “applicant” cities. The IOC will select the site of the 2010 Games on July 2, 2003, at a general assembly in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic.

Vancouver offers the advantages of a bigger city, which--as in the choice of Salt Lake and the site of the 2006 Winter Games, Turin, Italy--the IOC now prefers. It has turned away from village-oriented Winter Games, as in 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway.

Vancouver’s other decided advantage is the alpine facilities at nearby Whistler.

Other contenders, according to a number of IOC members who declined to be interviewed on the record, appear initially to be Salzburg and Bern.

In 2005, meantime, the IOC will pick the site of the 2012 Summer Games. U.S. cities New York, San Francisco, Washington and Houston are vying for those Games.

The Olympics were held in Australia in 2000 and will be held in Europe in 2004 (Athens), in Europe again in 2006 (Turin) and then in Asia in 2008 (Beijing). They were held in Asia in 1998 (Nagano, Japan). The United States will have held them four times in recent years--Lake Placid (1980), Los Angeles (1984), Atlanta (1996) and Salt Lake City (2002).

Canada, however, has not staged the Games since 1988 (in Calgary). Toronto bid for the 2008 Summer Olympics but finished as runner-up to Beijing.

Canada, of course, offers the same time-zone advantages that U.S. broadcasters--the Olympic movement’s primary financial underwriter--find so attractive.

Awarding the Games to Vancouver would tie in with a recent IOC tradition of rewarding second tries; Athens, for instance, won the 2004 Games after losing out on the 1996 Olympics. Perhaps more important, Canada in 2010 would ease the way for the many members interested in bringing the Summer Games, the IOC’s historical showcase, back to Europe in 2012.

Officials in Madrid, Rome, Moscow, Paris, London, Rio de Janeiro and Havana have announced preliminary interest in staging the 2012 Games. Europeans account for about half the IOC membership and, though financing comes largely from U.S.-based corporations, European interests often drive the IOC’s agenda.