Possible Olympic bid remains alive as council votes to move forward

Exploration of a bid for the 2026 winter Olympics will move on to the next step after council approved more funding by a 9-4 count Monday evening.

Elected officials voted in favour of putting one million dollars toward the bid committee right now and another one million dollars contingent on the provincial and federal governments stepping up support.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi says council really made their opinions clear on the matter.

“They didn’t want to kill this, they wanted to move forward, but they also really understand that that one of the really critical things is that we are going to need all three orders of government federal, provincial and municipal to agree to move forward and they didn’t want to go too far down that road without knowing where they’re at,” said Nenshi.

Nenshi is scheduled to meet with the premier later this week about the province’s support.

Jeromy Farkas, Peter Demong, Sean Chu and Druh Farrell voted against the motion.

Farrell says she remains concerned with the whole process and the risks associated with hosting the Olympics.

“My concern is that we think we are different than every other city that has bid on the Olympics and lost money,” said Farrell. “So let’s identify those risks and let’s understand what the IOC wants, they are changing the game as we speak and so it is very difficult to understand with any type of certainty what type of risk we would be taking.”

This money is on top of the five million dollars that was earmarked for the committee earlier this year.

A formal proposal for a bid needs to be submitted to the International Olympic Committee by January 2019.

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