Today was day 4 of skiing and snowboarding on Hokkaido. We did a "cat day" with Type Two Three, which is a guided backcountry day using a snow cat. It was incredible and we were up to our waists in the fresh stuff. Our guides were two former US Navy SEALs and our driver (pictured above in the middle of the group photo) was a professional snowboarder who competed in the men's half pipe event at the 2006 Winter Olympics (in Torino) for Japan. His name is Fumiyuki Murakami and, if you're into snowboarding, I would encourage you to give him a follow on Instagram. He's a fantastic snowboarder and a very nice man.
Today was a great day in the mountains.
In my humble and partially biased opinion, two of the greatest places on earth to snowboard are the French Alps and Utah. I say the French Alps because, after 13 years of annual trips, I have yet to find better food and better après parties. And I say Utah because it's, like, pretty hard to beat the greatest snow on earth.
Well today, both of these places were announced as future hosts of the Winter Olympics. France will host the games in 2030 (once it has successfully met certain conditions) and Utah will host the games in 2034. This is exciting.
But it was also entirely expected.
France was the preferred choice since June. And Utah was the only choice for 2034. To host the Winter Games, you generally need to have at least two things: money and snow. And right now, fewer places want to spend the former on something that may or may not generate an ROI, and fewer places are getting the latter.
Remember this post looking at the impact of climate change on the Winter Olympics?
Because of these challenges, there is talk of the IOC adopting a permanent rotation of Winter Olympic cities. And Utah has been eagerly positioning itself to be one of the places. Biases aside, this feels like an obvious choice. Salt Lake City has some of the best and most accessible snowboarding in the world (SLC is a great airport) and -- most importantly -- it still snows there.
Photo by Alex Moliski on Unsplash
Sometime before the Paris 2024 Olympics this summer, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is expected to announce who will host the 2030 and 2034 Winter Games. Right now, the two frontrunners are thought to be the French Alps and Salt Lake City/Park City -- I think respectively.
Obviously these are two fantastic winter locations. But one of the things that the local committees need to do before they can secure the games is show the IOC that they have enough hotel rooms on hand. More specifically, they need 24,000 rooms reserved for 33 nights. This covers 17 nights during the games, 14 nights before, and 2 nights after.
Most of these rooms, about 10,000 or so, will go to journalists.
I didn't fully appreciate -- or I just didn't think about it -- that this was something that needed to be done 6-10 years out. Because right now there is a human running around try to lock up these rooms in advance of the decision this summer.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, they're already at 85% of the requisite 24,000 rooms. Though some of these rooms have yet to be built and some of them reach into neighboring Wyoming, which apparently isn't an atypical distance when it comes to meeting this accommodation requirement.
For obvious reasons, I'm rooting for Utah here. I really want them to get the Winter Games.