The Swedish Olympic Committee (SOC) announced Wednesday it will submit an application for the cities of Ostersund and Are to bid for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.
If Sweden is awarded the Games, events would be held in Ostersund – a regular organizer of top-level international Nordic skiing and Biathlon competitions about 250 kilometres north of Stockholm – and Are, a leading venue in the alpine skiing World Cup calendar.
SOK’s next formal step will be to submit an application to the IOC. The IOC will send bid applications in May and the deadline for submitting preliminary bids if July 28. The IOC will select the 2014 host city in 2007.
Pier-Axel Eriksson, a Swedish Olympic Committee (SOC) member and bid project leader, estimated the cost of staging the 2014 Games at $829 million.
Sweden has never held a Winter Olympics but it hosted the 1912 Summer Games and the equestrian events of the 1956 Summer Games. Stockholm unsuccessfully bid for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games.
