By Ossian Shine
KUALA LUMPUR, July 31 (Reuters) - The snow will be fake, but
the very real financial muscle China boasts proved decisive on
Friday when Beijing won the right to host the 2022 Winter
Olympics.
Games officials meeting in Kuala Lumpur voted for the
Chinese capital over the lure of a winter wonderland offering
from Kazakhstan's Almaty, in a clear sign that the International
Olympic Committee is craving solidity and security after a
series of problems and headaches.
While Rio scrambles to make up lost time in its building for
the 2016 Olympics, and Tokyo is embroiled in a stadium drama
ID:nL3N10920C the allure of a megacity with a cast-iron
financial guarantee proved irresistible.
That Beijing will deliver what Chinese President Xi Jinping
is calling "excellent and extraordinary Games" is without doubt,
and IOC members voted for that security.
"It's symbolic and it is a measure of confidence," former
IOC president Jacques Rogge told Reuters. "It's a good day for
the Olympics."
Not all shared his enthusiasm. The New York-based Human
Rights Watch group declared "in choosing China to host another
Games, the IOC has tripped on a major human rights hurdle."
Beyond the slopes, it was a good day for sports equipment
and apparel manufacturers who will now gain exposure to China's
hundreds of millions of aspirational middle classes. Beijing
mayor and bid leader Wang Anshun dangled the prospect of 300
million new converts.
"We will leverage this success to popularise and develop
winter sport in China," Wang told reporters.
The enormous cost of the sporting spectacle - Russia's Sochi
games cost a record $51 billion - weighs increasingly heavily.
Stockholm, Krakow in Poland and Oslo all pulled out in the
course of the bidding.
Vice-president Craig Reedie told Reuters the IOC had chosen
certainty in China. "We know how the Chinese work. There is a
familiarity."
It was a close-run thing, though, with the Chinese winning
by 44 votes to 40 -- just two voters' difference.
Many were charmed by Almaty's promise of a picture postcard
event blanketed in snow in the former Soviet state. The Kazakh
offering was an intimate one, with no venue more than 35 km (22
miles) from the Olympic Village.
By contrast, Beijing's winning bid features repurposed 2008
Summer Olympic venues in the capital and events an hour away at
two mountain ranges.
BROWN, BROWN, BROWN
With little snow on the Yanqing and Zhangjiakou ranges,
these Games will be "brown, brown, brown" one senior IOC member
told Reuters, and will depend on man-made snow.
"Keeping it Real" had been the Kazakhs' motto, a cheeky dig
at Beijing's reliance on artificial snow.
In Almaty, though, Kazakhs reacted to losing with a mixure
of disappointment and relief. President Nursultan Nazarbayev,
who has ruled for 26 years, had said the Games would "make the
names of Kazakhstan and Almaty ring out across the world".
Lawyer Ruslan Dzhusungaliyev, a 45-year-old Almaty resident,
said on his Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) page: "Hooray! The Olympics will be held in
China, and our budget will not be plundered."
The IOC membership did keep it real, though, and this meant
following the money and a tried-and-tested Olympic city.
Beijing's victorious bid team were euphoric, with Wang
declaring a historic day.
"This day will go down in history," he told reporters. "The
first time in Olympic history that a city will host both a
summer and a winter Olympics. In 120 years this is
unprecedented. We are overwhelmed."
But back home the response was a little more muted
ID:nL3N10B20J with little of the public displays of joy which
had greeted the decision to award the 2008 Summer Games to
Beijing.
By selecting Beijing, the IOC also appeared willing to
accept what looks certain to be a seven-year barrage of
questions and criticism over China's human rights record.
HIGHER, FASTER, STRONGER
Human Rights Watch, which was highly critical of both China
and Kazakhstan during the bid process, was quick to voice its
displeasure ID:nL3N10B2UD .
"The Olympic motto of 'higher, faster, and stronger' is a
perfect description of the Chinese government's assault on civil
society: more peaceful activists detained in record time,
subject to far harsher treatment," HRW's China director Sophie
Richardson said in a statement.
The Games body has been criticised by human rights groups
for years, most notably after awarding the 2008 Summer Games to
Beijing and the 2014 Winter Games to Sochi.
It has since added anti-discrimination clauses to the host
city contract.
IOC president Thomas Bach had said on Thursday the committee
had been speaking to a wide range of groups, including Human
Rights Watch, but that outside the context of the Games, the IOC
had to respect the laws of sovereign states.
"With our Olympic values of tolerance, respect, excellence,
non-discrimination, we send a strong message to the world - the
strong message spread by the athletes living together in the
Olympic Village in a community where all people are equal."
China has long argued that it is unfairly singled out for
criticism of its rights record and says other governments should
examine their own records before making accusations.
The Beijing 2022 bid committee did not immediately respond
to a request for comment, but said this week sport should be
kept separate from politics ID:nL3N10A1SJ .
China's Foreign Ministry also did not immediately respond to
a request for comment.