Pyeongchang to host 2018 Winter Olympics!!!

Pyeongchang has successfully won the bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics!! The vote was held in Durban, South Africa this morning. I completely flipped my opinion on this bid over the last year. Originally I had been pulling for Munich, but I changed my tune more recently. My daughter started kindergarten this year and is learning Korean. Her school teaches Korean and our family has grown very fond of the country over the past year. I held no ill will for them before I had only preferred to see a different country selected after Pyeongchan's first two bids were unsuccessful. We watched the announcement live this morning and we are all very excited. 2018 is a long ways off but it is possible that this may be the first Olympics that I attend! 평창 축하합니다!

NBC renews Olympics broadcasting rights in the USA through 2020

It was announced today that NBC won bidding for the American broadcast rights to the four Olympics between 2014 and 2020, beating out competing bids from ESPN and Fox. I personally would have been interested in seeing ESPN take over to mix things up, and get live coverage, but alas we will be watching tape delayed coverage for the foreseeable future. Fourth-Place Medal has a nice list of Pros and Cons they've written up:

Pros
• NBC's sports coverage is better. Sunday Night Football is the best sports broadcast on television. The network's broadcasts of Wimbledon and golf's U.S. Open are the highlights of those sports' respective seasons. In terms of production, NBC is top-notch. There are plenty of legitimate complaints about the network's coverage (and we'll get to them) but how it looks and sounds isn't one of them.
Fox dumbs down sports for the viewer and thinks cluttering the screen with graphics and adding whooshing sound effects enhance the broadcast. ESPN is all about promoting ESPN. Though the network's coverage of the 2010 World Cup proved it could be restrained, there's a difference between showing three, uninterrupted soccer games every day and coordinating between dozens of live events.
• Hosts/announcers. This plays into the last one. Bob Costas gets a lot of flak from snarky types who don't like the sweaters and fireside chats and how he and NBC turn the Olympics into a schmaltz-fest. Ask yourself though, were the alternatives any better? ESPN hosts are either professional and slightly boring (Bob Ley, John Saunders) or they're Chris Berman and Stuart Scott. Fox's best one, James Brown, left for CBS years ago. Try to name the guy who's the studio host for the network's NFL coverage. Even if you know it's Curt Menefee, I bet you had to think about it for a second.
Had another network won Olympic rights, there would have been plenty of defections of talent. The big names like Costas may not have been going anywhere. Analysts who specialize in a single sport (think Rowdy Gaines for swimming and Dick Button for figure skating) would have had nothing to do at NBC without an Olympics to call and would likely have jumped at an offer from Fox or ESPN had one been made. Still, having them there is comforting. They're good at what they do. And the thought of Gus Johnson yelling over speed skating races in 2014 would have given me nightmares until then.
• NBC is changing. The network said Tuesday that every event from each of those four Olympics will be available live on some platform. (Streaming Internet video seems the most likely.) With that announcement, the biggest complaint about NBC's coverage is wiped away.
Cons
• Tape delay, tape delay, tape delay. Streaming or not, it still sounds like NBC plans to tape delay television broadcasts. ESPN said in its bid that it would show all events live and compile a primetime compilation for the evening. If I'm reading between the lines of NBC's statement correctly, the network plans to stream some events live on the Internet and then hold their television broadcast until primetime. An improvement, but not the ideal.
Under Ebersol, NBC was notorious for tape delaying Olympic coverage until primetime, seeing it as the best way to attract viewers in the most profitable advertising time of the day. When Usain Bolt broke the world record in the 100 in Beijing, viewers here had to wait nearly 10 hours to watch it on TV. In the digital age of the Internet and Twitter and Facebook, that wasn't going to fly for too much longer.
The problem is that for all the carping, the tactic worked. NBC's ratings on the west coast (where all events on the main network are tape delayed) outpaced those on the east coast. People still watched the second week of Beijing coverage even though it was mostly pre-recorded. This won't be as big a problem in Rio for 2016 because the city's time zone (one hour ahead of New York) will allow most primetime coverage to appear live. In Sochi, it will be.
Maybe by 2016 the viewing experience on our computers will be equal to watching on TV. For now, streaming is an acceptable, if lesser, option.
• Lack of Disney involvement. In a statement released after the bidding, ESPN expressed regret that it didn't place the winning bid and gave a hint at what, beyond billions, that it would have done for the Games. "We put our best foot forward with a compelling offer that included the enthusiastic participation of all of The Walt Disney Company's considerable assets," the statement said. Participation of all Disney assets? Does that mean some of the creative minds at the company could have been tasked to come up with better Olympic mascots than these creepy things?

Three Cities Officially Submit Bids for 2018 Winter Olympic Games

The International Olympic Committee has announced that three cities have been put forward by their respective National Olympic Committees to apply to host the XXIII Olympic Winter Games and XII Paralympic Winter Games in 2018. The cities, in alphabetical order, are: Annecy (France), Munich (Germany) and PyeongChang (Republic of Korea).

The three Applicant Cities will now proceed to Phase 1 of the IOC’s two-step procedure, which will lead to the election of the 2018 host city in Durban, South Africa, in July 2011. Phase 1, called the Candidature Acceptance Procedure, involves a thorough review by the IOC of each city’s potential to organise successful Olympic Winter Games in 2018. Cities must answer a questionnaire, and their answers are studied by the IOC, before the IOC Executive Board selects the cities that will become Candidate Cities and therefore move on to Phase 2.

Personally I would love to see it go to Munich! It would be a great to see it as the first city to host both the Summer and Winter games.

Annecy to bid on 2018 Winter Games

Awesome! This city is most well know for people like myself for the Annecy International Animated Film Festival

From ESPN:
France's Olympic committee chose the picturesque Alpine city of Annecy on Wednesday as its candidate for the 2018 Winter Games.

The head of the French committee, Henri Serandour, said Annecy was picked in the first round of voting over Grenoble, Nice and Pelvoux.

Annecy received 23 of 42 votes, with 10 for Nice, nine for Grenoble and none for Pelvoux. A majority was needed for victory.

Annecy, while less well-known than front-runner Grenoble, has enjoyed large popular support as a potential Olympic city. With the Alps soaring above its pristine lake, Annecy is considered a picture-perfect site for the games.

Bids must be supported by national Olympic bodies in order to be accepted by the International Olympic Committee, which will pick the 2018 host city in 2011.

Other cities that have announced bids or interest in 2018 are Pyeongchang, South Korea; Munich, Germany; and Almaty, Kazahkstan.

Video: Tromsø 2018 Winter Olympics (Fan Made?)

I have no idea if this is official or just the creation of an enthusiastic citizen from Tromsø. It's a fun, yet somewhat cheesy, peek at the possibilities.

From the description on the YouTube page for the video:
Tromsø has been selected by the Norwegian National Olympic Committee as Norway's candidate for the 2018 Winter Olympics. This is considered an interesting idea to many sports fans, as Tromsø would be the first city north of the Arctic Circle to host the games and would be the most compact games ever. As of March 2007, the Norwegian government still has yet to officially support Tromsø's bid

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”.

A Reno-Tahoe 2018 Winter Games Gets Support From Presidential Candidate

From GamesBids.com:
According to published reports there are efforts to bring the 2018 Winter Olympic Games to Reno-Tahoe. KRNV-TV reports that several people gathered at Mt. Rose to discuss the plan and those supporting the 2018 campaign said the Reno-Tahoe Games would include more events than the 1960 Tahoe Winter Games that were confined to Squaw Valley.

The group is confident that Reno-Tahoe has the capability to host such an event, with large venues like Lawlor Events Center and the University of Nevada, Reno, to be the site of a possible Olympic Village.

Steve Trounday of the Reno-Tahoe Winter Games Coalition said, “how do we match up against other cities that might be vying for the bid in 2018? I think we match up very well. We have an airport that can handle it. We have the mountains so close. We are one of a few cities that is 45 minutes away from the furthest venue”.

Addressing concerns that traffic could be the biggest roadblock, Trounday said that the region does have multiple highways leading up to Tahoe and a railroad running right through downtown Reno. He also said the Olympic Games could help the area secure a new form of transportation that would benefit future generations.

He said, “I think we can get light rail from the university to Mt. Rose or from Reno to Truckee”.

Gilbert Coleman, a local economist, said the idea of a Winter Games in Reno-Tahoe is completely feasible as Reno is no stranger to tourism.

Supporters of the bid said money generated from the Games would total more than $5 billion and create new jobs.

Republic Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who helped bring the Winter Games to Salt Lake City in 2002, told the Reno-Tahoe Winter Games Coalition that if he was elected to the White House he will try to make Reno-Tahoe a reality.

He said, “you can bet, if you are the host city representing the United States, I will work to help this city get the Games”.

He added, “we’d make sure the federal government would be a partner with Nevada and with the Reno region and making sure we had our ducks in a row. You can never know that you are going to get the Games your first time out”.

Jim Vanden Heuvel, chief executive officer of the coalition, called Romney a “miracle worker” in turning around the Salt Lake City Games.

He said Romney’s pledge of federal government support to help in the bid process represents a reversal of decades of tradition that put the responsibility for drawing the Olympics to the United States in the hands of non-profit organizations. He said the governments in other countries take the lead in the bid process.

Romney later said it would “be appropriate” for the federal government to help the region improve its roads to handle traffic from the Games.

He also advised the committee to hire people with experience running the Games.