Sion 2026: Why the Referendum Failed

(ATR) The reputation of the IOC and the mindset of Swiss voters combined to torpedo the Sion 2026 bid, according to the Sion vice-mayor.

Almost 54 percent of voters in the canton of Valais said no to the bid a week ago, with the city of Sion even more opposed to it. The result flew in the face of the broad support for the bid from Swiss sports federations and all levels of the government.

"What is puzzling is that if you look at the city of Sion the mayor’s party and mine account for at least 60% of the voting forces," Sion vice-mayor Christian Bitschnau tells Around the Rings. "yet we lost by 60% in Sion, 60.9 to be precise, which is a shock."

Bitschnau believes the reputation of the IOC as well as FIFA and UEFA, all with headquarters in Switzerland, hampered the efforts of the bid to convince voters that hosting an Olympics was the right thing to do.

"If you took the guy who is not really educated, not really following the news, he still has in mind the blow we got in 1999 when we lost the bid to Torino. There has been scandal in the Olympics, a long time ago not the case today anymore. There has been scandal on the soccer level with FIFA with Sepp Blatter who had to leave his office and UEFA with (Michel) Platini. They just put everybody in the same bag.

Bitschnau says his main frustration was that "we hardly ever talked" about the benefits of an Olympics and what hosting the world would mean for his country. He says the voters don’t care about that and only want to know the cost of the project.

"We were explaining the beauty of the project where we don’t build anything but deep in their mind they had the idea that every Olympics has resulted in a very huge deficit. The net result is that they had their mind set and once they had their mind set for all kind of emotional and illogical reasons you end up with the inability to make the people change their mind."

Richard Peterkin, IOC member from St. Lucia, believes that the decision made by Swiss voters runs even deeper.

"I personally think that they are more concerned with the financial risk of a major event, and don’t feel that they need to host a Games to develop their winter sports infrastructure, or promote Switzerland in general," he tells ATR. "They are a private people, and do not relish the attention and inconvenience, much less potential tax repercussions, that a major Games bid may cause. They are happy with the status quo, and the appetite for sports events is limited to smaller events such as the YOG or the IAAF Diamond League."

Denis Oswald, IOC member from Switzerland, tells ATR that a better job needs to be done in getting the message out that the cost of bidding for the Olympics is no longer exhorbitant.

"Clearly the population has not yet understood that the philosophy and the conditions have changed with the Agenda 2020," Oswald says. "One reason is that no Games have been organized according to these new principles and therefore we do not have a concrete example to show and use to convince people. Till then we have to reinforce our communication in this respect."

Swiss Olympic says it will prepare post-referendum reports and share them with all the bid stakeholders and the IOC.

As for when there will be another Swiss bid for an Olympics, no one thinks it will be in the near future.

Oswald believes things could change if the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics in Lausanne is successful. Bitschnau thinks it will take a successful 2026 Games, the first Olympics under the new bidding rules, for his countrymen to see for themselves what is possible.

Written by Gerard Farek

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