2006 Winter Olympics - Host City Selection

Host City Selection

Turin was chosen as the host of the Olympics in 1999 at Seoul, South Korea in the 109th IOC Session. This was after the IOC had adopted new election procedures during the 108th Extraordinary IOC Session in light of the corruption scandals surrounding the votes for the 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympics. Since IOC members were forbidden from visiting the candidate cities (in the interests of reducing bribery), the 109th IOC Session elected a special body, the Selection College, to choose finalist cities from the pool of candidate cities after each had made their final presentations to the full IOC Session. The full IOC Session then voted on the cities chosen as finalist cities by the Selection College. Although six cities launched candidacies and made presentations to the full IOC Session, the Selection College chose only two cities to go forward to be voted upon by the full IOC Session: Sion and Turin. The candidacies of Helsinki, Finland; Poprad-Tatry, Slovakia; Zakopane, Poland; and Klagenfurt, Austria were dropped by the Selection College after all six candidate cities made their candidate presentations.

The selection of Turin over Sion came as a surprise, since Sion was the overwhelming favorite. Media speculation was that the choice of Turin was due to the IOC's desire to retaliate against Switzerland for the whistleblower role played by IOC member Marc Hodler in the revelation of the 2002 corruption scandal.

The information below comes from the International Olympic Committee Vote History web page.