Host City Selection
Planning of the Lillehamer bid started in 1981, following Falun, Sweden's failed bid for the 1988 Winter Olympics. It was supported by the government largely to help stimulate the economy of the inland counties. Lillehammer originally bid for the 1992 Games, but came fourth in the voting. In 1986, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted to separate the Summer and Winter Games, which had been held in the same year since the latter's inception in 1924, and arrange them in alternating even-numbered years. A new bid was launched for the 1994 Games, modified with an indoor speed skating venue and an additional ice hall in Lillehammer. Additional government guarantees were secured.
Three other locations bid for the games: Östersund, Anchorage in Alaska, and Sofia. The 94th IOC Session, held in Seoul on 15 September 1988, voted Lillehammer the host for the Games. The Lillehammer Olympics were the last Winter Games to date to be held in a town, rather than be centered around a city.
| City | Country | Round 1 | Round 2 | Round 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lillehammer | Norway | 25 | 30 | 45 |
| Östersund | Sweden | 19 | 33 | 39 |
| Anchorage | United States | 23 | 22 | — |
| Sofia | Bulgaria | 17 | — | — |
Read more about this topic: 1994 Winter Olympics
Famous quotes containing the words host, city and/or selection:
“A host is like a general: calamities often reveal his genius.”
—Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65–8 B.C.)
“A suburb is an attempt to get out of reach of the city without having the city be out of reach.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Every writer is necessarily a critic—that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on.... The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg—nine-tenths of him is under water.”
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)