Sapporo Mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto announced Wednesday that his city has officially dropped its bid for the 2030 Winter Games, after it struggled to gain local support amid a series of bribery scandals related to the Tokyo Games and due to cost concerns.
Akimoto, however, made it clear that the Hokkaido capital is still hoping to host a future Winter Olympics, perhaps as soon as 2034.
The announcement, made in a joint news conference with Akimoto and Japanese Olympic Committee Chairman Yasuhiro Yamashita, ends the city’s yearslong attempt to host the Winter Games in 2030. Sapporo became the first Asian city to hold a Winter Olympics in 1972.
“The scandals from late last year led to public distrust” against hosting the Olympics, said Akimoto, who had strongly backed the bid. “It was also difficult to gain people’s understanding over rising costs that would create a burden for citizens.”
Still, he indicated Sapporo was not giving up its Olympic dream.
“I’d like to emphasize that we will continue to explore with the JOC the possibility of hosting the Games in the future,” Akimoto said.
It remains unclear whether Sapporo and the JOC will be able to build public support for a bid for 2034 or afterwards.
The 2030 bid never had strong backing from the local populace. A Hokkaido Shimbun exit poll from April local elections, when Akimoto was re-elected, showed 60% of Sapporo voters opposed the bid. A Jiji Press exit poll similarly indicated that 53% were opposed.
This contrasted with Sapporo’s chief rival for the 2030 Games — Salt Lake City, Utah. One local media poll in January showed that 80% of respondents in the state supported another Winter Olympics bid, despite the fact that nearby Los Angeles is hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. Salt Lake City, which hosted in 2002, has said it would prefer to host the 2034 Winter Games so that it isn’t hosting too soon after Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, Sweden and France have put their hands up to host the 2030 Winter Games, and the International Olympic Committee is expected to decide the winner before the Summer Games open in Paris in July next year.
Sapporo, however, retains at least one possible advantage over its rivals if it decides on a future bid: snow.
Experts at the University of Waterloo in Canada recently released a report on the future impact of global warming on past Winter Games’ hosts. The report estimated that as few as eight previous hosts, Sapporo included, will still have reliable winter weather conditions by the 2080s.
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