Tromsø Norway wants to bid for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games

From gamesbids.com:
Tromso Norway, located more than 220 miles north of the Arctic Circle, wants to bid for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the Tromso 2018 bid committee has already spent $3.3 million to prepare its bid and the Norwegian Sports Confederation has already endorsed Tromso over Oslo/Lillehammer and Trondheim.

Tromso wanted to bid for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games but according to the Tribune the Norwegian government decided against a 2014 bid thinking it was too close to the 1994 Lillehammer Games.

Erlend Rian, an adviser to Tromso 2018 and the city’s former mayor said, “the Arctic is an undiscovered area for most people. We are hoping the selection committee will choose us because we think we represent something quite different from the usual winter resort”.

Addressing the issue of potentially holding the Games in the Arctic darkness Rian said that in 2018 the Games are supposed to start February 16, almost four weeks after the sun returns. He said if the International Olympic Committee (IOC) could be persuaded to push it back just one week Tromso would have seven or eight hours of sunlight each day.

Rian added that a growing number of Winter Olympic events, including some ski jumping and slalom racing, now take place at night under artificial lighting.

As for the cold Arctic winter, the currents of the Gulf Stream warm Tromso. Its deep-water port remains ice-free throughout the year and the average January temperature is 25.

Rian said Tromso’s ace in the hole is the guarantee of snow, which the traditional winter resort areas can no longer guarantee because of global warming.

Would accommodation be an issue in this cit of 60,000? Rian said with its university and with an increasing international interest in Arctic exploration, Tromso is one of Norway’s fastest-growing cities. The 4,000-unit Olympic village that would house the athletes could be designed for easy conversion into suburban housing once the Games are over.

Tromso is also planning to build four hotels to accommodate spectators and the media expected at the Games with the overflow being accommodated in many luxury cruise ships.

Also most residents seem to favour the idea, reports the Tribune.

Stein-Gunnar Bondevik, communications director at the University of Tromso, the northernmost university in the world, said, “even though this is the Information Age and the 21st Century people still have stereotyped views about living above the Arctic Circle. This could be a window of opportunity to show the world that we have four seasons and a modern society”.

The government’s Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs is to make a recommendation to the parliament next spring on whether to proceed with the bid.

Rian said, “our bid will have lots of meteorological data. In years to come what will winter look like? Nobody knows for sure but a least in Tromso you can still be sure of being able to have Winter Games”.

Meanwhile the IOC had no comment on Tromso’s potential bid, reports the Tribune. The newspaper quotes IOC spokeswoman Sandrine Chabert saying, “the process for 2018 has not even started yet”.