A Look Back

I figured that a good place to begin the discussion would be with a brief look at how any city wins the opportunity to host an Olympic Games.  From here on out, this space will be more of a continuously updated blog focusing primarily on the day's Olympic news.  Of course, I reserve the right to intersperse Sochi Watch with history lessons when the mood strikes.

  Here is a nifty little synopsis of the timeline with regard to Sochi,  provided by the invaluable Gamesbids.com.  Essentially, what happens is this:

A country's National Olympic Committee' (NOC) nominates a city to host a particular Olympic Games by a deadline.  To move forward in the process, the NOC must then submit a signed Candidature Acceptance Procedure, pay the application fee (for the 2014 Games, the fee was $150,000) and submit a questionairre.   The IOC Working Group then reviews the applications to help the Executive Board select a short list of Candidate Cities (for 2014, the short list was PyeongChang, South Korea, Salzburg, Austria and Sochi).  These cities then move on to the second phase of the process.

The Candidate Cities must then submit their 'candidature file' (also known as a bid book),which is essentially a detailed description of each host city's Olympic plans.  The IOC Evaluation Commission then reviews each candidature and produces a report  which is distributed to the members of the IOC about a month before the vote.  In this report, the IOC also takes into consideration the official visits made to the Candidate Cities a few months before the final vote by all IOC members.  Finally, at an IOC Session, a vote is taken.  The entire process takes roughly 2 years and begins about 9 years before the Games (Sochi was announced as host of the 2014 Games in July of 2007).

Thus concludes today's history lesson.  All of this sounds neat and tidy but, every so often, the ugly underside of the process is revealed to the general public (Salt Lake City, anyone?).