The International Olympic Committee’s policy-making Executive Board announced Wednesday it would enter into “targeted dialogue” with Brisbane for the 2032 Summer Games, seemingly all but ensuring the Olympics will return to Australia 32 years after Sydney in 2000.
The announcement marks the first turn of the IOC’s new way — formally introduced in 2019 — of selecting Games hosts. No more fancy, expensive bid-city contests.
Among Olympic insiders, the Brisbane announcement had been expected for months. John Coates, head of the Australian Olympic Committee, is also the senior IOC member overseeing preparations for the Tokyo 2020/1 Games and, moreover, one of IOC president Thomas Bach’s trusted allies.
All the same, this Australia development misses the why-did-this-happen news.
The Doha, Qatar, skyline // Getty Images
That would be Doha, and the Middle East. Once again, Doha got the shaft. And the IOC missed an opportunity to at the very least inquire about an opportunity. If not worse.
This calls to mind a reasonable question: if the IOC purports to be all about spreading the so-called Olympic values to all the corners of the world, and if Doha — and especially by 2032, given that it will have staged the soccer World Cup in 2022 — would be a reasonable choice, why the hurry to say, now, it must, or ought to be, Australia?
In its news release, the IOC touts several reasons why — 11 years out — now is the time to lock in Brisbane. Keep in mind that until 2017, when the IOC entered into a historic double deal that saw Paris get 2024 and Los Angeles 2028, the standard lead time for a Games was seven years.
Why 11 years and why Brisbane, per the IOC? Why, when the IOC is struggling to get to the opening ceremony in Tokyo and, just a few months beyond, to Beijing in 2022?
“The decision to advance the process was taken at this particular moment, given the uncertainty the world is facing right now,” the IOC release says.
“This uncertainty is expected to continue even after the COVID-19 health crisis is over. The IOC is considering seizing the momentum offered by the excellent project of Brisbane 2032 and the AOC, in this way, bringing stability to the Olympic Games, the athletes, the IOC and the whole Olympic Movement.”
This is gibberish.
If you want stability — Doha is awash in financial stability, a World Bank high-income economy sitting on huge reserves of natural gas and oil. This is a fact of modern life. As will become clear when the World Cup goes global next year, its stadiums are technological and environmental marvels. Australia, by contrast, as awesome as it is in the western public imagination, has 25 million people and it’s an extremely excellent bet that taxpayers will end up paying significantly for whatever the Olympics bring., and this is insecurity — it is exactly the reason why western taxpayers have been fleeing the Olympics.
The IOC release could just have easily said: “Brisbane and Doha offer equality compelling candidacies. We note that Doha, in particular, has developed a striking set of world-class facilities, incredible year-on-year experience in the production of international sports events and, as well, offers the athletes and the IOC the opportunity to enhance the universality of the whole Olympic Movement.”
Let us travel back in time to 2009. Doha bid for the 2016 Games. It was rebuffed. Didn’t even make the finals.
Rio won, as everyone knows. What was the key to the Rio presentation at the IOC session in Copenhagen?
The map.
The map that showed the Games had been to every continent but South America.
Now that map needs to be further refined.
The Games have yet to go to Africa — the Dakar Summer Youth Games have been pushed back to 2026, if they’re going to take place at all, and the MENA region, Middle East and North Africa, home to many millions of the IOC’s purported target audience, teens and 20-somethings, has yet to be seriously considered.
So why Australia, and why Australia now, 11 years out? What’s the rush?
The IOC answer doubtlessly will be that after the jumble cluster that was Rio the movement will prefer the reliability of western civilization in Australia.
That IOC critics keep noting the turn of the Games to autocratic nations such as Russia (2014) and China (2008, 2022) and Qatar in 2032 would be just — too soon.
Perhaps.
Or that after the security concerns of 2018 in Korea it didn’t want to go through all that again in 2032 in the Middle East.
But every Games has security issues. That’s priority No. 1 for the IOC since Munich in 1972.
The perception that the Games are going to Australia, now, as an owe-you-big-guy to Coates — right or wrong, fair or not — will be hard to shake.
IOC president Thomas Bach chairs Wednesday’s executive board meeting // IOC / Greg Martin
The IOC set-up is that this is a committee decision, a Future Host Commission for the Games of the Olympiad, headed by Norwegian IOC member Kristin Kloster Aasen, thereupon handed up to the policy-making executive board — thereby taking Bach and Coates out of the equation.
Do you believe that? If so, you might also believe there’s a bridge in Brooklyn for sale. Cheap.
Not only that — this is all being done while Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah of Kuwait, the power broker of many an Olympic election, is sidelined, confronting a forgery charge in a Geneva courtroom. About that case: Sheikh Ahmad has said many times he is innocent. Meanwhile, he is at an appropriate remove from Olympic power broking.
Bach and Coates are upright guys, despite the torrents of criticism often directed their way, but optics are optics.
And this is a bad look.
The worse look is that the IOC doesn’t want to confront the western press, particularly the British media, over Doha. Which is stupid. Having been to Doha many times — the Asian Games in 2006, the IAAF world indoor championships in 2010, the IAAF outdoor championships in 2019, other events — the city is dynamic, the facilities amazing and every new visit reveals another fascinating dimension.
And, here’s the real thing.
It’s not just Doha.
Saudi Arabia is making its move in sports, too.
This is just a matter of time.
The world is changing.
Look at the number of Arab nations that recently came to the table diplomatically with Israel. Inevitably, more will.
Last week in Tel Aviv, the International Judo Federation held a wildly successful Grand Slam at which the champion Saeid Mollaei, born in Iran, now a citizen of Mongolia, won silver in his weight class — to the cheers of the Israeli crowd.
When the European — the western — sporting elite refuses to engage with its sophisticated Arab counterparts, it inevitably raises common-sense questions of racism and discrimination. Plain and simple. These matters stand in direct contrast to the ethos of the Olympics.
It’s not that the IOC can do better.
Of course it can.
It must.
Starting with “targeted dialogue” with all — for emphasis, all — appropriate people.
What’s wrong with having two competing candidacies? Doesn’t common sense say competition inevitably makes the winner better? Iron forges steel, all that?
Why foreclose a possibility 11 years out just … because?