Exclusive-It's Time for Sweden Say IOC Members

(ATR) Swedish Honorary IOC member Arne Ljungqvist tells Around the Rings it is time for Sweden to host the Winter Olympics, as does current member Gunilla Lindberg

Stockholm, the country’s capital, filed a bid for the 2022 Olympics, running against Almaty, Kazakhstan; Beijing; Krakow, Poland; Lviv, Ukraine and Oslo.

"It intrigued me a little," Ljungqvist said at the World Anti-Doping Agency World Conference on Doping in Sport in Johannesburg, South Africa.

"It’s time for Sweden to have the Winter Games. We have a convincing Winter Olympic history. We have a convincing record on hosting major sports competitions and being a safe and nice country so why not?"

Gunilla Lindberg, secretary general of the Swedish Olympic Committee and a current IOC member underlined Ljungqvist’s comments saying Stockholm has "a great bid."

"We can make 95 percent of all competitions in the city center," she said. "We have good logistics, we don’t have to build many things."

Stockholm has hosted a Summer Olympics, but that was more than a century ago in 1912.

"It’s an interesting project they launched and surprisingly much can take place in Stockholm and the Stockholm area," he said. Mountain events for the proposed Games would take place in Are.

"We have much of the infrastructure in place and we are a winter sport country so we have the audience."

Ljungqvist served as an IOC member from 1994 to 2012.

Lindberg wouldn’t make a prediction on the race, which is still in its infancy. The IOC deadline to bid was last Friday.

"We are a competitor like everybody else" she said.

The IOC will select a host for the 2022 Olympics at its 2015 Session in Kuala Lumpur.

Written by Ed Hula III.

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