Tag: 2022 Winter Olympics

Colorado now has an official exploratory committee to look into hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics, but U.S. Olympic officials are still playing hard to get in the midst of an ongoing revenue-sharing dispute with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

How serious is Colorado getting about throwing its hat in the Olympic ring for the 2022 Winter Games? Now Sen. Michael Bennet is getting in on the act, pushing for swift resolution to a dispute between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) over revenue sharing.

With the rush of successfully hosting a major cycling event still fresh in the state’s collective consciousness, Colorado officials are starting to once again dream of Olympic glory.

Government officials from Vail to the Front Range foothills agree it will take an Olympian effort to fix winter weekend skier traffic snarls and summer tourism gridlock on Interstate 70 between Denver and Colorado’s most popular mountain resorts. But with a price tag of $9 billion for high-speed rail from Denver to Vail, some observers say it will literally take the Winter Olympics coming to Colorado to secure the federal and state funds needed to make the rail solution a reality.

The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics were essentially two winter Olympics - the Vancouver and Whistler Games – separated by a mere 70 miles and an unnecessarily difficult mass transit mess that took more than three hours to navigate. The Colorado equivalent would be to shut down Interstate 70 between Denver and the mountain resorts of Summit and Eagle County and invite the world to come enjoy a grueling three-hour bus ride. That's simply an unacceptable scenario if Denver wants to seriously consider hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics.