Italy\u2019s Winter Games could have been Canada\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The International Olympic Committee was more than willing eight years ago to give the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games to Calgary and Canmore, Alta. The IOC even put 2030 forth as an option, too.<\/p>\n
The 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary and Canmore still make money via interest on endowment funds.<\/p>\n
While Calgary deliberated on a 2026 bid, the country wasn\u2019t far removed from the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Vancouver and Whistler, B.C., which broke even financially and where the host team won a record 14 gold medals.<\/p>\n
So why didn\u2019t it happen in Calgary for 2026?<\/p>\n
The requirement by Alberta\u2019s NDP government at the time to hold a plebiscite, combined with government foot-dragging on financing, made a short runway for Calgarians to digest and trust what bidding for another Winter Games meant.<\/p>\n
The combined contribution of the federal, provincial and municipal governments wasn\u2019t clear until less than two weeks before the Nov. 13, 2018 plebiscite, when just under 40 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot \u2014 and 56 per cent cast a dissenting one.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fundamental flaw was we ran out of time,\u201d said Scott Hutcheson, a commercial real estate mogul and former national team alpine skier who was the bid chair.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was unfair to Calgarians that we didn\u2019t have our funding model until a few days before the vote.\u201d<\/p>\n
City council chose the date for the plebiscite. The government funding agreement that was supposed to be ready for public consumption mid-August wasn\u2019t until Oct. 31, after some plebiscite votes were already cast via mail-in ballot.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had two weeks to convince the community that we were going to get a return on our investment, so it was really difficult,\u201d said Mary Moran, who was the bid\u2019s chief executive officer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d just produced the amazing video that would have won the hearts of Calgarians, Albertans and Canadians that was finished the day of the plebiscite. Imagine if we had until January or February, we would have way better opportunities to engage.\u201d<\/p>\n
The IOC was embarking on new bid criteria. Instead of \u201cbuild, build, build\u201d it was \u201creduce, reuse, recycle\u201d to make bidding more attractive and affordable for cities, which weren\u2019t lining up to host any more.<\/p>\n
The 2026 bid proposal for Calgary and Canmore featured a $500-million revival of the \u201888 facilities, the sprucing up of McMahon Stadium and the Saddledome, and the construction of an indoor field house, a 5,000-seat ice arena and 600 or more affordable housing units.<\/p>\n
The total cost of hosting the Games was estimated at $5.1 billion. The Canadian government committed $1.45 billion, and the Alberta government $700 million, conditional on holding the plebiscite. Canmore\u2019s contribution was $3 million.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s contribution was $390 million, plus a $150-million credit for downtown development already planned that would have doubled as Games preparation.<\/p>\n
The city is currently spending $515 million on Scotia Place, which is scheduled to open in 2027 and replace the Saddledome as the new home of the Calgary Flames.<\/p>\n
Games revenues \u2014 sponsorship, ticketing, licensing and merchandising \u2014 plus a $1.2 billion contribution from the IOC in cash and services, were projected to cover the remaining $2.23-billion cost of hosting a 2026 Games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would have got $25 billion of economic impact,\u201d Hutcheson said.<\/p>\n
A new fractious city council had just been elected in 2017. Nervous councillors nearly scuttled a bid in an October confidence vote. Rachel Notley\u2019s NDP government was preoccupied with the looming 2019 provincial election.<\/p>\n
Mayor Naheed Nenshi eventually supported a bid.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe gave the Olympic support too late. I didn\u2019t have him until very, very close to the end. \u201d Hutcheson said. \u201cThe premier dragged her feet. She didn\u2019t help us get the funding model done until it was too late. The feds were our best partner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now the leader of Alberta\u2019s NDP opposition, Nenshi was unavailable for an interview about Calgary\u2019s decision not to pursue a 2026 Olympic bid, his spokesman said.<\/p>\n
Calgarians had a hard time believing the security bill would be $495 million after the $900 million of Vancouver and Whistler, even though Calgary doesn\u2019t have an ocean harbour to defend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very sympathetic to the psyche of Calgary at that time when they had to make that decision because we were in the worst economic situation in our history with $23 (a barrel) oil, 40 per cent office space vacancy and 11 per cent unemployment,\u201d Moran said. \u201cThere was this fearmongering going on around that \u2018it\u2019s going to increase our taxes.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWe built the most sophisticated budget in the history of a bidding organization because we wanted to mitigate the risk for our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
No government offered to be a guarantor against debt, which B.C.\u2018s provincial government did for 2010. Calgary\u2019s bid corporation built $1.1 billion in contingency funds into its hosting plan.<\/p>\n
Calgary\u2019s bid exploration was also under the intense microscope of social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very easy to create a belief that things are going to be too expensive,\u201d said John Furlong, who led B.C\u2019s Winter Games and lent his expertise to Calgary\u2019s 2026 bid corporation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do think that this was a big miss for us because when you think of where we are today, the state of the country, what\u2019s going on internationally, this event qualifies very easily as a nation-building event. It did in 1988, and it did in 2010. These are the types of events that are transformative for a country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within weeks of the plebiscite, the \u201888 sliding track for luge, bobsled and skeleton at Canada Olympic Park shuttered and hasn\u2019t reopened.<\/p>\n
The Olympic Oval, which offers sport to the public, the University of Calgary and high-performance athletes, is on the verge of losing its ability to make ice because of brine leaks in its floor.<\/p>\n
WinSport, which oversees Canada Olympic Park and the endowment funds, and the Oval still host international sport, but there\u2019s been a decline in the number of World Cups in the city and in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve held more international and world-level events in the Bow Valley corridor than any other jurisdiction in Canada, and we gave that up,\u201d Moran said.<\/p>\n
The Canmore Nordic Centre, a cross-country ski and biathlon facility, is in a provincial park. A $27.1-million expansion paid for by the province was recently completed. It\u2019s in the best shape of the \u201888 venues.<\/p>\n
Interest on the endowment fund \u2014 worth about $120 million this year \u2014 helps pay for operations at COP, the Oval and a training centre at the Nordic Centre. But it can\u2019t turn back time on 38-year-old construction.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe model from the \u201888 Olympics… was phenomenally successful, but it was done. It needed a renewal,\u201d said WinSport chief executive officer Barry Heck. \u201cTo undertake a renewal of that magnitude, there\u2019s only one silver bullet, and that is a major Games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to turn to a Plan B. Now, we\u2019ve successfully pieced some of it together. What we weren\u2019t able to do was save the sliding track. The Oval is on life support.\u201d<\/p>\n
An Olympic bid includes the requirement to also host the Paralympic Games, which wasn\u2019t the case in 1988.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people go through their lives without looking at life with an accessibility lens,\u201d said Ryan Straschnitzki, who was paralyzed from the chest down in 2018 when a semi-trailer crashed into his Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team\u2019s bus.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving the Paralympics in Calgary would have been a cool opportunity to not only promote these amazing athletes and how cool the Paralympics are, but also to promote accessibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old, who has played Para hockey and now plays wheelchair basketball, is certified through the Rick Hansen Foundation on a rating system that measures the physical access of buildings and other sites.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to how Calgary has done with accessibility in general, depends who you ask,\u201d Straschnitzki said. \u201cI can navigate pretty well in a wheelchair, but there are a lot of businesses that have been around for a while that are inaccessible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next Winter Games are in the French Alps (2030) and Salt Lake City (2034). Switzerland put its hand up for 2038.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Summer Games, followed by Brisbane, Australia, in 2032.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means that the next clearly available Games are the summer of \u201836 and the winter are \u201840, and that\u2019s a long time in our planning cycle,\u201d said Canadian Olympic Committee chief executive officer Dave Shoemaker.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe continue to have discussions with the City of Calgary, City of Vancouver, City of Montreal and other places about their longer-term aspirations for the Olympic Games.\u201d<\/p>\n
Current Calgary mayor Jeromy Farkas, who voted against pursuing a 2026 bid when he was a councillor, said \u201cCalgarians made the right choice to choose not to opt for the Olympics this time around. There\u2019s significant challenges with the business case of that 2026 bid. Significant details were lacking in terms of the finances, security costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I would say, it\u2019s not out of the question for us to consider a future bid at some point. We think about Alberta\u2019s and Calgary\u2019s Olympic legacy, the fact that we need to renew our Olympic Oval, other training facilities. There\u2019s a strong business case for reinvesting and doubling down on our Olympic legacy and the challenge is still going to remain some of the conduct of the international organizing committees, the sporting federations, as well as the cost for security.\u201d<\/p>\n
Catriona Le May Doan, who won two Olympic gold speedskating medals in her career while training at Calgary\u2019s Oval, says she heads to the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics to do corporate work with mixed feelings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard for many people going into these Games because we just keep thinking what could have been, which is not the right way to look at it, but it\u2019s hard not to,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u2014 With files from Dayne Patterson in Calgary.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 6, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italy\u2019s Winter Games could have been Canada\u2019s. The International Olympic Committee was more than willing eight years ago…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[28463,1019,54400,4087,895,26,5294,896,5,4,51824,333,43],"class_list":["post-448811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary-flames","tag-28463","tag-bc","tag-bc-sports","tag-business","tag-calgary","tag-calgary-flames","tag-calgaryflames","tag-flames","tag-hockey","tag-nhl","tag-oly","tag-politics","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116023634443467314","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}