HOBART OLYMPIC BID CALLS FOR SUPPORT AHEAD OF THE 2012 GAMES

THE GROUP BEHIND THE BOLD BID TO BRING THE OLYMPICS TO HOBART SAY NOW IS THE PERFECT TIME FOR GROUPS AND POLITICIANS TO STEP UP AND SUPPORT THE BID AS THE WORLD GOES OLYMPIC CRAZY.

The bid that had the world talking has switched focus to bringing a smaller scale Youth Olympics to the city in 2022, and with it being just over a year since the switch over, bid founder and president of the Hobart Organising Group for Major Events (HOGME) Ben Waterworth reckons that with the focus of the world switching to London for the 30th Summer Olympiad, it’s an important time to realise how big of a drawcard the Olympics can be to a city.

“What we’re about to see in London is going to be incredible. For just over 2 weeks we’ll see the greatest athletes in the world compete together for national glory in the biggest peacetime event the world sees. It doesn’t matter if you love or hate sport, the sense of national pride that an Olympic games brings to each individual country is like nothing else, and bringing that sense of feeling to Hobart has always and will always be our goal with the 2022 bid” Waterworth says.

“Things have been slow since the changeover last year but that was to be expected. We received a large amount of publicity locally, nationally and internationally about our 2020 bid and given the finalists for these games have been announced, we have had a lot of people forget about us. Changing over to a Youth Olympics bid certainly has given us a more realistic goal of bringing the Olympics to Hobart and with a Youth Olympics being the less than a quarter the size of what we will see in London and going off already built venues and infrastructure, it fits in perfectly with a city the size of Hobart to be able to host such an event. Our goal is to get local, state and eventually federal politicians to support our goal more so than they have, with sponsors and other community groups to follow. We have held talks with numerous politicians on both sides of politics as well as other groups and even sponsors and received a large amount of positive feedback that this can happen. It’s time now for the talk to stop and for the action to happen.”

With slow movement happening behind the scenes of the bid, it is hoped that with the exposure the Olympics are set to receive this coming weekend that the attention and interest the bid received over the last few years will return and once again Hobart will talk about the benefits a Youth Olympic Games would bring to this city.

The next Youth Olympics are scheduled to be held in Nanjing in China in 2014 and the 2018 games to be fought out between 6 different cities. The group has until 2016 to receive formal recognition from the AOC in its hope to not only bring the Olympics back to Australia but also the Youth Olympics to Australia for the first ever time.

Hobart Organising Group for Major Events
http://www.hobart2022.org
Hobart Organising Group for Major Events