By Antonio Broto

Beijing, Jul 31 (EFE).– The International Olympic Committee steered clear of financial risks and decided to award the 2022 Winter Games to Beijing, capital of the world’s second-biggest economy, instead of Almaty, Kazakhstan, which argued it could offer a more natural and authentic cold-weather sporting event.

In a decision certain to spark controversy for some time (similar to when the 2008 Summer Games were awarded to Beijing), the IOC opted Friday at a meeting in Malaysia for the enormous size and existing Olympic infrastructure of the Chinese capital, even though the ski slopes outside the city – as opposed to those near Almaty – will require large quantities of artificial snow.

Beijing also suffers from severe pollution and is the capital of a country with a history of human rights violations, meaning the selection is sure to prompt criticism of the IOC and Chinese organizers from rights activists and environmentalists, as previously occurred between 2001 and 2008.

But Beijing’s financial muscle gave it the edge, not unlike when Tokyo beat out Madrid and Istanbul as host city of the 2020 Summer Games with a proposal deemed more financially viable.

The Chinese capital promised an added financial boost for the winter sports industry estimated at $800 million, pledged to invest $160 billion to reduce air pollution and launched a plan to introduce some 300 million young people to winter sports.

“This will be a memorable event at the foot of the Great Wall for the whole Olympic family, the athletes and the spectators that will further enhance the tremendous potential to grow winter sports in our country, in Asia and around the world,” Beijing’s bid committee said in a statement after the IOC’s announcement.

Economic concerns about Kazakhstan, a country with ambitious development plans through 2050 – some of which rely on financing from China – but whose gross domestic product is highly dependent on oil revenues, must have weighed heavily on the IOC’s decision.

The sharp drop in international oil prices dating back to last year could have posed financing problems for Almaty, which is not yet a significant global tourist destination and therefore lacks sufficient hotel and transport infrastructure.

Another key factor was the pledge by Beijing’s bid committee to have a high-speed rail line in place by 2022 to cover the 250-kilometer (155-mile) distance between the capital’s downtown and the city of Zhangjiakou, which will host different skiing and snowboarding events.

Ski-lovers in Beijing currently must drive at least three or four hours by car to reach Zhangjiakou, but that time will be reduced to less than a half-hour with the new bullet train.

China’s world-leading high-speed-train network, built in less than a decade, lent credibility to that pledge, and indeed regardless of the outcome of the IOC’s vote the Asian giant was already determined to link Beijing and Zhangjiakou by high-speed rail as part of its plan to convert that northern region in a megalopolis known as Jing-Jin-Ji.

“With our infrastructure and our experience, we guarantee the best possible Games,” Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun said Friday in making a final pitch for his city at the IOC meeting in Kuala Lumpur.

Beijing’s victory means an Olympic Games with large-scale investment outlays but fewer natural winter landscapes and almost certainly less snow than Almaty, which lost the balloting by a narrow 44-40 margin.

“We reached the final (round). We did well. We lost by very little,” Kazakhstan’s foreign minister, Erlan Idrissov, said, offering congratulations to Beijing. EFE