Rogge talks up African Olympic bid

Baku (Azerbaijan), Doha (Qatar), Istanbul (Turkey), Madrid (Spain), Rome (Italy) and Tokyo (Japan). The IOC will choose the host next year.
African countries will have to wait for the 2024 Games to have an opportunity to bid for the biggest multi-sport event in the world.
The South African city of Durban showed interest in hosting the 2020 Olympic Games but eventually decided not to bid.
Rogge remains hopeful that Africa will bid in future.
“(For the Olympic Games) to come to Africa, there should be a good candidature and we would be delighted to see a good candidature coming from Africa. This has not been the case for the competition for 2020 but I hope after,” Rogge said at the Youth Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck.
In 2010 South Africa became the first African nation to host the soccer World Cup and it remains to be seen whether African countries will come forward to bid to host the Olympic Games in the near future.
Meanwhile, the IOC boss does not expect large numbers of winter Olympians to come from Africa.
“It’s a difficult task because obviously you need the geography and you need the climate for, I would say, about two thirds of the winter sports.
“The other (facilities) we need are ice halls. What we can do is to give scholarships to athletes to come and train with established countries, which we do by the way, and people perform well but it’s never going to be a mass participation,” said Rogge.
The International Ski Federation have development programmes for Africa, said their president, Gian-Franco Kasper.
“In South Africa, in Lesotho, we have got big programmes. We sent them coaches, we support them, we invite them all to seminars, coaching seminars, innovations. We have same things for Algeria, for youth development programmes, not only for Algerians but for all of Africa.”
He suggested that African strength in long and middle-distance running could be a foundation for success in cross-country skiing, which emphasises endurance over strength.
“They (African athletes) have the talent, but they have to train on snow to have the technical things. But for the rest, as an athlete, they don’t have a problem, otherwise they have the talent. They need snow experience, of course,” said Kasper.
But he echoed Rogge’s assessment that Africa’s geography and climate will limit its winter sports future.
“For Africa, it’s too cold here and too warm for us to go there,” said Kasper.
South Africa, Morocco and Eritrea each sent one athlete to the inaugural YOG.
Moroccan Adam Lamhamedi won a gold medal in the men’s Super G.
He lives in Quebec and trains with the Canadian team.