On November 7th, 1972 the state of Colorado held a vote to see if tax payers were willing to host the Winter Olympics in their state. Nearly 60% voted NO! Before the vote the state promised to spend no more than $5 million on the games and 80% were against it. The people of Colorado had learned that it cost California $13.5 million, Innsbruck in 1964 $20 million, France spending $14.7 million on facilities alone and that Japan was going to spend more than $17 million on facilities for the 1972 games. So, the IOC had to move the games to another location that had just hosted the games 12 years earlier. The host city ended up being Innsbruck, Austria. Just two and a half years earlier a group from Denver who returned from a meeting with the IOC were praised with a motorcycle ride through downtown and with a brass band playing as they arrived.
The people of Colorado said that the promoters never asked how they felt about hosting the games and tried to imply that they lacked patriotism if they were not for the games. Other issues was that it was going to destroy the natural beauty of Colorado by tearing down trees and such because Colorado was planning on using up a 166-mile distance, which is from Denver to Steamboat Springs. It was also thought that more people were going to move into Colorado because of snow-capped mountains and wide open spaces that were already attracting newcomers. Mike Moran said "I don't think the likelihood of any city in America hosting the Winter Games is probably practical until after 2020". Well he was obviously wrong because Salt Lake City hosted the Winter Games in 2004 due to many controversies.
I really found this article very interesting because at first I had no idea why they would want to turn down the bid. After reading it, I became very interested in finding out that quite a few places are worried about hosting the Olympics and that it can destroy our environment, depending on the location. I would like to see if maybe another controversy like this will come up in the future about a new location. It could create a lot of problems in the global marketplace.
ReplyDeleteI also really enjoyed this article. I thought that it was very cool that a city was environmentally concerned even back in 1976. The go green movement was nowhere in sight but the city of Denver without even knowing took a big step in starting the movement. I would like to go to some of the other cities around the world that have also hosted summer and winter Olympics. I would like to see the impact that the Olympics had on the people of the city and I would also like to see the environmental impacts that have taken place.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Colorado took a unique stance in deciding not to host the Olympics in 1976. There was opposition to the Olympic bid in Chicago, and it may be more prevelant in other bid cities as well. I think we just do not always hear about it because whoever does the bid wants to make everything appear positive.
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