Qatar Contemplating Further Olympic Bids

Qatar’s Olympic Committee will continue to bid for Summer Olympics despite losing out in bids for the 2016 and 2020 games, according to reports. 

Qatar Olympic Committee’s general secretary Saoud bin Adulrahman told a sports business conference Thursday, “We will continue on that path and we will continue to bid. Every time we bid, we are listening and learning to see how we can make our bid stronger.

“Our 2020 bid was stronger than our 2016 bid because the IOC (International Olympic Committee) executive board accepted our plan to host the Games in the October window, which didn’t happen the first time”.

Qatar is hosting the 2022 soccer World Cup which it plans to stage in October inside air-conditioned stadiums to cope with the heat, reports Reuters.

Abdulrahman al-Thani said, “we think our next bid (for the Olympics) will be even stronger because of what we have learned from 2020 and we think that each time we bid, we can get closer. We think that if we can keep doing that, one day the dream will happen to host the Olympics in the Middle East”.

He added that the focus was on legacy and avoiding the creation of “white elephants”.

“We have watched countries build large venues and struggle later with what to do with them. Our team has worked backwards, thinking first about how these venues can be of use in the future before planning their use during major sporting events”.