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I was wondering how big does a City has to be in order to host a Olympics in both Winter and Summer? I notice the Cities that host The Summer Olympics are generally Larger then the Cites who host the Winter Olympics in size and Population.
- Infraestructures.
- Security.
- Ready for tourism.
- Transport.
By the way and talking about the population I think from 1 million people more or less but it's not a rule. Barcelona was an example of a city not being extremely big but just big.
I was wondering how big does a City has to be in order to host a Olympics in both Winter and Summer? I notice the Cities that host The Summer Olympics are generally Larger then the Cites who host the Winter Olympics in size and Population.
Larger cities tend to have the infrastructure in place to host the myriad of events plus deal with the crush of visitors that descend on them during the games. They're not all monster cities like Beijing and London though--Sydney, Atlanta, and Barcelona were in the 4-5 million range when they hosted the games. Montreal in 1976 couldn't have had more than 2 million people in its metro--a borderline small city.
- Infraestructures.
- Security.
- Ready for tourism.
- Transport.
By the way and talking about the population I think from 1 million people more or less but it's not a rule. Barcelona was an example of a city not being extremely big but just big.
Not necessarily. Rio has currently only two metro lines and the safety, although it had improvements in the most recent years, is still far from ideal. Many infrastructure works are under construction and certainly the situation of Rio will be very better in 2016, but these mentioned above were certainly not the primary reason for choosing Rio as host city for 2016.
One of the primary requirement for the Winter Olympics is to be close enough to mountains able to have a ski area able to hold an Olympic/World Cup size downhill race. The minimum vertical drop needed for a men's downhill race is about 800m--about 2,600 ft--with most races falling in the range of 800m-1000m(around 3,200 ft)--and you're going to need reliable snow coverage as well(or cold enough temperatures for snow-making).
The ski area doesn't have to be right in or adjacent to the host city--as was the case with Vancouver and Whistler and will be the case with Sochi next year. The ski area will need to be at least within an hour or two of the host city. However, if you want to look at what areas are able to host the Winter Olympics--look at a list of ski areas in the world by vertical drop and/or which mountains holds World Cup downhill races currently.
More recently, as the Winter Olympics have gotten larger, there's been a trend towards having the games set in larger cities near the mountains--Vancouver, Torino, Salt Lake City, and so on... These days they might not consider Squaw Valley or St. Moritz--basically large ski resort villages as being viable candidates for the games. They want larger arenas capable of having big crowds for hockey and figure skating along with the opening cermonies. They want international airports nearby and plenty of hotels for visitors and other amenities. However, the size of the Winter Olympics is easily accomodated by midsize cities.
The Summer Games on the other hand completely dwarf the scale of the Winter Games. The amount of events and venues needed--along with participating countries--is much more than the Winter Games. In general you need to be considered an large global city(or almost there) and have large venues or be willing to build them. Atlanta was one of the smaller choices in terms of size, and Athens was a very borderline pick. Which is why it's funny when some city like Tulsa, Oklahoma or Baku, Azerbaijan puts together a semi-serious bid. The Summer Olympics is going to cities near the top tiers of world cities--and in general you need a city or country rich enough financially to put up enough money to host the games--both in terms of new infrastructure and covering the cost of everything else(unless you can get plenty of sponsors like Atlanta did). Most games end up losing money--the most profitable Summer Games was Los Angeles in 1984, when they just used existing venues and got corporate sponsors and ended up making a good profit.
First, it cost an enormous fortune to host the Olympics, which favors the larger cities with the bigger tax base.
The winter olympics must be some place with snow and ice and a ski mountain. That limits the options. Also many winter sports are outdoors, so fewer stadiums need to be built.
Winter or summer, the town has to be large enough to house and feed all the visitors.
Larger cities tend to have the infrastructure in place to host the myriad of events plus deal with the crush of visitors that descend on them during the games. They're not all monster cities like Beijing and London though--Sydney, Atlanta, and Barcelona were in the 4-5 million range when they hosted the games. Montreal in 1976 couldn't have had more than 2 million people in its metro--a borderline small city.
Montreal Metro had 2,743,208 people in 1971, and 2,862,286 in 1981. Still small, but not that small.
Surely infrastructure is a far more important criterion as opposed to size? Having a decent metro system to travel people around different venues is an absolute must, maybe a large international airport too, or at least one within the vicinity.
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