The next Olympics, the Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, are 379 days away. Does that surprise you? It surprises me, in a "time flies" kind of way. Wasn't it just yesterday that we were snarking about the Sochi Games? Vlad's "Look how cool I am" personal ego trip, at the cost of $51 billion dollars. The light bulbs that wouldn't turn on and the toilets that wouldn't flush. The way-too-warm climate in Sochi, where on several days of the games it was warmer there than here in Chicagoland. Those were the days, for sure, but as always happens, the games went on, everyone lived to tell the tale and when it was all over, the Olympic flag was passed to PyeongChang.
The PyeongChang games are the first of three Olympiads in a row to be held in Asia, followed by the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo and the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing. The location of the 2024 Summer Games will be announced in September, to be chosen from one of three remaining candidate cities, Los Angeles, Paris and Budapest. Will the games return to the U.S.? As I've written before, I think they will. In 2024 it will be 28 years since the Summer Games in Atlanta and 22 years since the Winter Games in Salt Lake City. It's more than our turn.
Farther in the future, cities including Calgary, Stockholm, Sapporo, Innsbruck and 2022 runner-up Almaty are believed to be looking at bidding for the 2026 games. Apparently Lake Placid, New York, which hosted Winter games in 1932 and 1980, might consider a bid, but only if L.A. does not get the 2024 games. All this info comes from a fun website called Gamesbids, which obsessively tracks everything related to Olympic bidding. Check it out here.
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