One of the strangest Olympic bidding races in recent memory came to a surprising end Friday when Beijing, which staged the Summer Games seven years ago, was awarded the rights to the 2022 Winter Games, setting up the Chinese capital to become the first city to host both versions of the Games in more than a century of Olympic history.
Beijing’s victory was not the stunning part; given the commercial success of the 2008 Games, it was seen as a heavy favorite. What resonated was Beijing’s tiny margin of victory over the upstart bid from Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Beijing received 44 votes from International Olympic Committee delegates while Almaty received 40, a strong total indicating just how conflicted voters were over whether to give the Games to a country with plenty of resources but virtually zero winter sports history or send them to Central Asia for the first time in a still-developing former Soviet republic.