{"id":53184,"date":"2014-10-03T05:30:27","date_gmt":"2014-10-03T05:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=53184"},"modified":"2014-10-02T19:45:18","modified_gmt":"2014-10-02T19:45:18","slug":"winter-olympics-what-now-for-2022-after-norway-pulls-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2014\/10\/winter-olympics-what-now-for-2022-after-norway-pulls-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter Olympics: What now for 2022 after Norway pulls out?"},"content":{"rendered":"
And then there were two.<\/p>\n
Norway’s decision to pull out of the bidding to host the 2022 Winter Olympics in Oslo leaves the International Olympic Committee (IOC) with only Almaty in Kazakhstan and Beijing in China to choose from when it meets next year.<\/p>\n
Many will see that as not much of a choice at all.<\/p>\n
According to campaign group Human Rights Watch, Kazakhstan’s record on human rights is “poor” and that\u00a0“torture remains common in places of detention”.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n China, meanwhile, remains an\u00a0“authoritarian, one-party state”\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0which “justifies human rights abuses as necessary to preserve ‘social stability'”.<\/p>\n This is not what the IOC needed after so much controversy surrounding the selection of Beijing for the 2008 summer Games and\u00a0Sochi for the 2014 winter version.<\/a><\/p>\n Add two World Cups in Russia and Qatar, and a certain theme seems to be developing when it comes to the world’s biggest sporting events.<\/p>\n So why did Norway say ‘no thanks’?<\/p>\n It says a lot when Norway decides against hosting such an event.<\/p>\n The country has more winter medals than any other nation. Oslo, the capital, hosted the 1952 Winter Games and Lillehammer staged them in 1994.<\/p>\n But after Sochi’s mind-boggling $51bn (\u00a331bn) price tag, Norwegian public opinion was divided.<\/p>\n Norway’s parliament reflected this on Wednesday, refusing to grant the required government financial guarantees, despite the IOC providing $880m (\u00a3544m) to help stage the Games.<\/p>\n Maybe this was no surprise.<\/p>\n