IOC moves 2030 Olympic host city decision to September 2023 at the earliest

Olympic rings in Coal Harbour during the Vancouver 2010 Games. (Canadian Olympic Committee)

A decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to postpone next year’s general meeting by at least about four months could provide proponents of the Vancouver bid for the 2030 Olympic Winter Games with more time to assemble their bid plans and agreements.

In a press conference on Thursday, James Macleod, the IOC’s director of Olympic solidarity and NOC relations, said the 140th IOC Session scheduled to be held in Mumbai, India in May 2023 will now be moved to September or October 2023 at the earliest.

This is due to what he describes as “ongoing internal disputes, governance shortcomings, and ongoing court cases” with the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), which is the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of India. Similar reasons dogging Guatemala’s NOC also resulted in its suspension this week.

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The main issue at hand with India is political infighting within the IOA. The IOC is demanding the IOA hold its quadrennial leadership election no later than December 2022 or face sanctions, including the potential ban of Indian athletes from competing in the upcoming Olympics and other world competitions under the Indian national name and flag.

The IOC Executive Board will decide in December 2022 whether to maintain Mumbai as the host city for the IOC Session in September/October 2023 or relocate it out of India.

IOC officials also emphasized that either way, the host city of the 2030 Games will be made during this IOC Session, whenever and wherever it is held. For the 2010 Games, they were awarded by the IOC on July 2, 2003 during the 115th IOC Session held in Prague, Czech Republic.

But it remains to be seen whether the IOC’s schedule of selecting candidate cities for the advanced”targeted dialogue” stage of the 2030 bidding process will be maintained for December 2022. Under the IOC’s flexible reforms for the bidding process, the timeline for starting the targeted dialogue could potentially be moved up to early 2023.

Currently, the IOC is nearing the end of its “continuous dialogue” stage with potential bid cities for 2030.

If the “targeted dialogue” stage is moved to a later date after 2022, this could potentially be beneficial for the First Host First Nations and the Canadian Olympic Committee’s (COC) efforts to bring back the Winter Games to British Columbia.

All BC cities, most importantly Vancouver, are in the midst of a civic election cycle, with voting date scheduled for October 15, 2022. The new Vancouver City Council will have its inaugural meeting in early November 2022.

At the provincial level, BC premier John Horgan is retiring, and a new party leader for the BC NDP — effectively becoming the new premier — is not expected to be selected until early December 2022 at the very earliest. The provincial government is expected to make a decision on its support for the Indigenous-led 2030 bid before the end of this year.

Earlier this summer, City of Vancouver staff expressed some concerns over whether the timeline to achieve a multi-party agreement between all stakeholders involved is achievable by December 2022.

The COC later clarified that the multi-party agreement, which is not required by the IOC and only a local precedent set by the 2010 bid, can be finalized by February 2023 at the latest.

Based on the IOC’s current timeline, the more complex agreements are negotiated with the IOC as needed, should be Vancouver bid be invited into the “targeted dialogue.” This work was originally intended to reach completion at the end of March 2023.

Despite the major internal/domestic challenges with the Vancouver bid, it can still be considered a frontrunner.

Vancouver faces potential competition from Salt Lake City in Utah (2002 Winter Games host city), Sapporo in Japan (1972 Winter Games host city), and Barcelona in Spain (1992 Summer Games host city).

The Spanish region of Catalonia, home of Barcelona, intends to submit a solo bid for the 2030 or 2034 Games after a co-host bid concept with the adjacent region of Aragon fell apart earlier this year due to infighting. But this new direction still requires the blessing of Spain’s NOC.

As of this week, the potential Sapporo bid is in rough waters, affected by a bribery scandal from the Japan organizing committee for Tokyo 2020. A planned visit by Sapporo’s mayor this month to the IOC headquarters in Switzerland was cancelled as a result.

And in recent months, Salt Lake City has indicated it may be leaning more towards bidding for 2034, while still keeping the door open for 2030. This is largely because of timing — the far larger Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Summer Games come just 18 months before the 2030 Winter Games. Theoretically, this could prompt the back-to-back American Olympics to compete for the same pool of domestic sponsors, and hurt the financial viability of both Games, especially LA 2028, which takes precedence.

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