China, Spain Join Seven-country Race for 2010 Winter Games

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, January 31, 2002

China, Spain Join Seven-country Race for 2010 Winter Games

The International Olympic Committee said Monday that China had selected the city of Harbin as a candidate for the 2010 games. The IOC will evaluate the candidates and announce a short list of finalists in August. The winner will be selected in 2003.

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Submission of bid for 2010 Winter Olympics

China and Spain submitted late bids for the 2010 Winter Olympics, putting seven countries in the race for the games, according to a report by chinadaily.com.cn.

The International Olympic Committee said Monday that China had selected the city of Harbin, in the northeast Heilongjiang province, as a candidate for the 2010 games.

The IOC confirmed it also received a bid from the Spanish town of Jaca, which was unsuccessful in two previous Winter Olympic attempts. Jaca, in northern Spain, was chosen by the Spanish Olympic Committee over the southern resort of Granada.

The deadline for submission of bids to the IOC is Feb. 4.

Winner to be selected in 2003

The other candidates who have already entered the race or are expected to: Berne, Switzerland; Kangwon province, South Korea; Salzburg, Austria; Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzogovina; and Vancouver, British Columbia, in Canada.

The IOC will evaluate the candidates and announce a short list of finalists in August. The winner will be selected in 2003.

Still to be decided is whether IOC members will visit the bid cities.

Member visits have been prohibited since the Salt Lake City bribery scandal. But there is a strong push for visits to be reinstated, and a decision will be made at a special IOC session in Mexico in November.

The Winter Olympics

The move toward a winter version of the Olympics began in 1908 when figure skating made an appearance at the Summer Games in London.

Organizers of the 1916 Summer Games in Berlin planned to introduce a "Skiing Olympia," featuring nordic events in the Black Forest, but the Games were cancelled after the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

Despite the objections of Modern Olympics' founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin and the resistance of the Scandinavian countries, which had staged their own Nordic championships every four or five years from 1901-26 in Sweden, the International Olympic Committee sanctioned an "International Winter Sports Week" at Chamonix, France, in 1924. The 11-day event, which included nordic skiing, speed skating, figure skating, ice hockey and bobsledding, was a huge success and was retroactively called the first Olympic Winter Games.

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