IOC in Calgary to answer questions about potential Olympic bid

IOC praises Calgary during latest visit IOC officials were in Calgary as part of an effort to drum up support for a potential bid to host the 2026 Games. Jordan Kanygin reports.

Calgarians are considering a potential bid for the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and members of the International Olympic Committee are in the city to provide an update on the status of the bid.

BidCo invited Olympic Games Executive Director, Christophe Dubi, and Hannah Burns, the head of promotion for Olympic candidatures, to attend an information session at Canada Olympic Park on Wednesday morning.

The IOC members were joined by Calgary 2026 CEO, Mary Moran, and some of Canada’s Olympic athletes.

Dubi says the Olympics make sense for the city and the city makes sense for the Olympics.

“We have a city, we have a region that has most of the venues, a large majority. But importantly, it has this habit of hosting on a yearly basis a number of international events, welcomes world championships, and you do this very well,” he said.

Funding for the games continues to be a concern for many Calgarians and the goal of the session was to provide an opportunity to answer any questions before the November 13th plebiscite.

It will cost an estimated $5.23 billion to host another Olympic games in eight years’ time.

About $3 billion will come from public investment and will be split between the three orders of government and the rest will come from the IOC, sponsorships and ticket sales.

“The piece that’s getting missed the most is that we’re still talking about, at a minimum we have $4 billion coming into this community and that’s without understanding what the city’s committing so, you know, I think it’s really important to focus on that because there’s not a lot of projects in Calgary right now that have $4.4 billion coming into the community,” said Moran.

The IOC was asked if it would be open to contributing more money and Dubi said its current offer is ‘significant’ and that the $925 million US is the absolute maximum right now.

"As a nonprofit, we can't commit more than what we have," he said.

Invited candidates must submit a formal bid proposal by January and a host city will be selected by the IOC Session in September 2019.

For more information on public engagement for the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, click HERE.

For more information on the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games bid, click HERE.