Vladivostok will join Russia’s growing domestic race to bid for the 2036 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the mayor said Thursday.
The city of about 800,000 on the Sea of Japan near the borders of North Korea and China will join St. Petersburg and Kazan vying to be named Russia’s candidate to engage the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in bid discussions.
“We do realize that our chances [to win the bid] are not that big but we want to move further and to submit a bid for hosting the 2036 Olympic Games,” Mayor Konstantin Shestakov said at the 6th Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok, according to TASS.
“It will all help us to create additional infrastructure, which will provide for the brighter living conditions on the territory of Vladivostok.”
Last month Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said several cities in Russia are preparing bids for the 2036 Olympics, noting that interested cities should move quickly or get left behind.
Russia planning 2036 Olympic Games bid with several possible host cities under consideration
In July Brisbane was awarded the 2032 Games during a meeting in Tokyo but due to ongoing sanctions Russia was not allowed to bid for the event . The nation is being punished by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) after the international regulatory body found that data from a Moscow laboratory had been tampered with and manipulated. The punishments will end in late 2022.
There is no set timeline for the 2036 Olympic bid process. Instead, the IOC engages in a continuous dialogue with interested regions until a suitable partnership is found for any particular edition of the Games. Projects from Germany, India, Indonesia, Hungary, Qatar and North and South Korea were involved in the dialogue for 2032 and are expected to remain in the running for future Games.
Paris will host the Olympics in 2024 followed by Los Angeles in 2028.