WI/AHC: Southern hemisphere Winter Olympics

Arkenfolm

The Winter Olympics has never been held outside of North America, Europe, or Japan until this year, and also has never been held outside the Northern hemisphere. There hasn't even been a serious bid to host the Winter Olympics in the Southern hemisphere, even though there's of course no reason why there can't be. And no Southern hemisphere nation aside from Australia and New Zealand have won medals.

So what would be the best chance to hold a Southern hemisphere Winter Olympics, with a POD of 1924, the start of the Winter Olympics? Let's not go too far in the future, too.

I would rate Australia or New Zealand to have the best chance at hosting the Winter Olympics in the Southern hemisphere, despite the many issues (New Zealand especially would need quite an investment to host the games). Argentina or Chile could also be able to host the Winter Olympics, and I think a more successful 20th century for either nation would leave either country very well positioned to bid for the Games.

Anything else seems very, very difficult. Maybe a South Africa wank for South Africa to host the Winter Olympics? Or even co-host it with a similarly-wanked Lesotho. I guess you could have South Island secede, so this new country hosts the Winter Olympics instead of New Zealand. There isn't a lot of other options--maybe Bolivia or Peru? Although the retreat of Andean glaciers has unfortunately caused great damage to winter sports in those countries. Antarctica, perhaps, with an entirely different history than OTL, where the games would be held on either a neutral site belonging to no nation (or a bit more ASB, to a "Republic of Antarctica) or on the Antarctic territory belonging to a Southern Hemisphere nation like Uruguay or Brazil (both nations in theory could acquire Antarctic territories).
 
Julius Vogel

Julius Vogel

Easiest answer is to somehow bring the load down a bit so no one expects say a Sochi, in which case a more moderate games would be doable for NZ
 

SactoMan101

I'd say eventually Chile. Why? Because there are sites in Chile where the Winter Olympics could be held in the Northern Hemisphere summer.
 

Mumbles

This came up on the sports radio station I listen to the other day and sheer logistical aspects aside (building pretty much every facility from scratch because the population doesn't otherwise exist in New Zealand to support them), there are things like no ski runs with enough vertical drop (800ish metres) to enable activities like Giant Slalom. To host the Winter Olympics in NZ is verging on ASB.
 

Alexpira

Would guess that Chile / Argentina are the most doable on terms of snow quantity / quality, physical aspects and logistics, although the economic burden of such event would be heavy on those countries.
 

Galba Otho Vitelius

Australia is the best bet, Melbourne gets the winter Olympics instead of the summer Olympics or in addition to them and the mountain events are held in the Australian Alps.
 

Galba Otho Vitelius

In the early Olympics, the summer and winter games tended to be held in the same country. Looking it up, during this period when the summer games were held in countries which couldn't host the winter games because of lack of mountains (the Netherlands and the UK though if you really wanted to do it you could put the winter games in Scotland) the winter games were held in Switzerland.

So in this timeline, the tradition continues, whenever possible the same country gets both the winter and summer games during the cycle. At a minimum, this puts the winter games in Australia twice and the Aussies could pull that off. There is a problem when the summer games come to Brazil. Either Brazil doesn't hold the summer games or the winter games are held in Chile that year, so you get a third southern hemisphere site.
 

L4a1

You could have them being co-hosted by two countries. Australia and NZ have co-hosted other sports events, that could spread the cost across two countries.
 

Alexpira

Galba Otho Vitelius said:
Australia is the best bet, Melbourne gets the winter Olympics instead of the summer Olympics or in addition to them and the mountain events are held in the Australian Alps.
Click to expand...
On economics Australia for sure, but length of snow season in the Australian Alps is a bit uncertain and medium snow coverage is rapidly declining during the last decades....so, would be risks to the event.....maybe heavy use of artificial snow would be a possibility...
 

ejpsan

When they moved the Winter Games to the "Off Year" starting in 1994 with Lillihammer, it was stated that this would allow the games to be held in the Southern Hemisphere in July but there is a little known sporting event that happens in that time frame every four years: World Cup.
 

Arkenfolm

unclepatrick said:
Antarctica, the one place in the southern hemisphere where Snow in not a problem.
http://antarcticaedu.com/olympicsantarctica.htm
Click to expand...

With a POD of 1924, it's probably possible to have the Winter Olympics in Antarctica before 2100 although IMO it wouldn't count if it's held on the territory of a northern hemisphere nation. I'm pretty sure you could even have the Winter Olympics in the Antarctic summer. The big problem is all the Antarctic nations have better places to host the Winter Olympics than in a place that at best will be like Svalbard or remote Canadian mining towns in the Arctic. Except for maybe Brazil/Uruguay and their hypothetical Antarctic territories, but why the hell are you giving the Winter Olympics to Brazil or Uruguay for anyway?

ejpsan said:
When they moved the Winter Games to the "Off Year" starting in 1994 with Lillihammer, it was stated that this would allow the games to be held in the Southern Hemisphere in July but there is a little known sporting event that happens in that time frame every four years: World Cup.
Click to expand...

Which is why it was discussed regarding Qatar hosting the World Cup, as Qatar made plans to host it in the (northern hemisphere) winter/spring. So unless you have a situation where you're holding the World Cup outside of it's usual time, you'd need to hold the Winter Olympics in late July/early August.
 

ejpsan

metalinvader665 said:
Which is why it was discussed regarding Qatar hosting the World Cup, as Qatar made plans to host it in the (northern hemisphere) winter/spring. So unless you have a situation where you're holding the World Cup outside of it's usual time, you'd need to hold the Winter Olympics in late July/early August.
Click to expand...
The IOC and FIFA do not have the best of relations with each other and FIFA will not schedule the World Cup to accommodate the IOC.
July and August is the off season for the European Leagues and FIFA does not want to cause a conflict with the national bodies by having the World Cup interfering with their regular season.I
The real reasons for the change in the years in holding the games was to maximize television revenues and the growing complexity in staging the games.
 

Riain

Banned
If there isn't an 800m drop for the giant slalom in NZ there sure as hell isn't in Australia. The highest skiing mountains are below 2200m, snow won't fall reliably below 1400m and the season is often shockingly short with very little base.

IIUC South Africa is even worse than Australia, with only one or two runs in total.

Edit: Thredbo has Australias most elevation at 670m, 3 Kiwi resorts have over 700-780m. No giant slalom there without a fair bit of work.

There seems to be a number of big mountains with long drops in South America that might meet the criteria.
 
Last edited:

Spens1

has to be south america. NZ and Australia don't have the mountains to pull it off, our mountains are tiny and its warm mostly.

South Africa has no business asking for it and I don't think Drakensburg can host it anyway.

By process of elimination it has to be somewhere in Chile or along the Andes (hopefully its Chile, I don't think Brazil wants another major event on their hands).
 

Galba Otho Vitelius

Just googling "Ski resort (country X)" for fun.

"Ski resort South Africa":

http://www.news.com.au/travel/trave...s/news-story/4a4ba431c5a369f937ee26dc0e5bbe98

That is not very promising.

"Ski resort New Zealand"

Actually, this came up with a site called "Powderhounds" (www.pounderhounds.com"), which lists ski resorts for several countries. And it turns out that New Zealand has tons of ski resorts. I understand the problem is the country building the facilities for the ice events.

And it seems there are quite a few ski resorts, even well regarded ones, in both Chile and Argentina, including Ushuaia (Las Lamas), so that is the closest you are going to get to Argentina. Though apparently people take cruise ships to Argentina to ski.

Not in the southern hempshere is a ski resort in India. India has won a total of 26 medals (not gold medals, just medals) in the Olympics, half in field hockey, and is the least likely major country to host the games, well least likely after Bangladesh and Pakistan:

http://skigulmarg.com/

Probably there will never be a Winter Olympics in the UK either, though its doable with a great effort:

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/jan/19/skiing-snowbaording-england-pennines-lake-district

This is what came up for Brazil:

http://www.skipark.com.br/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski_Mountain_Park

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/São_Roque_(São_Paulo)

If the summer and winter games were always assigned to one country, they would definitely have had to pair with another country.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top