Sion 2026 Bid Needs Support of the People

This is the second in a series by Around the Rings analyzing the seven declared interested 2026 Olympic bidders announced by the IOC on Tuesday.

(ATR) The head of the Sion 2026 bid team will be keeping an eye on the competition but Jürg Stahl knows the biggest challenge to the Swiss bid comes from inside the country.

"We’re delighted to see that countries from several continents, including several from Europe, are interested in hosting the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Games. We have a lot or respect for each bid and will follow them," said Stahl, to Around the Rings,who is also president of the Swiss NOC.

"We have been working on our concept for a long time already and have been told that our technical concept is very good. We will now work on further explaining it and the upsides of hosting the Games to our population."

The future of the Swiss bid will be decided by the 220,000 voters in Sion’s canton of Valais on June 10, when a referendum will be held. If it fails to get 50 percent support, the bid will be dead.

Currently the Sion 2026 team is holding a series of informational events throughout Valais to convince those voters who still don’t trust that hosting an Olympics will be in the best interests of their canton. Each event, which usually has an Olympic athlete in attendance, has been drawing hundreds of people, according to bid organizers.

Should Valais support the bid, there is still the possibility of a national referendum on whether to spend $1 billion of federal money for an Olympic Games. The Nationalrat (National Council), the lower chamber of the Swiss parliament, narrowly approved the proposal last month but it must still pass the Ständerat (State Council), the upper chamber, when it reconvenes in June.

Sion vice-mayor Christian Bitschnau has told ATR he believes it is "highly unlikely" the measure will get through because the proposal amounts to a financial referendum, which is not a part of the Swiss system.

Should the referendum in Valais and the possible national vote pass, the Swiss parliament would still have to ratify the federal funding.

That approval seems very likely, given the Swiss Federal Council, the executive of the Swiss government, endorsed the bid in October and has promised to contribute the $1 billion if Sion is chosen by the IOC at its Session in Milan in September 2019.

If the bid can get the approval within the country, it stands an excellent chance of making it into the candidature phase of the process in October.

The Sion bid team has been working with the IOC for months to create a project that follows the guidelines of the IOC’s Agenda 2020. The bid is centered in Sion but includes the cantons of Valais, Vaud, Bern and Fribourg. It makes extensive use of existing infrastructure and estimates the cost to Valais taxpayers at $100 million, 60 percent of which will be used for legacy investments. The remaining money is earmarked for security.

Valais sports minister Frederic Favre tells ATR that while many don’t believe that it’s possible to organize a Winter Games with only a $100 million investment, Sion 2026 has the budget numbers to back that up.

Favre also says the IOC is pleased with Switzerland’s comprehensive train system, which allows visitors to travel from the Geneva airport to Bern or Sion in 90 minutes and connects the various venues within the four host cantons.

There’s no doubt that Switzerland fits the IOC’s wish of having the 2026 Winter Games in a "traditional" venue in Europe, North America or Asia.

Switzerland has not hosted an Olympics since 1948, the second time that St. Moritz was awarded the Winter Games.

Written by Gerard Farek

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