Canadian athlete reacts after Calgary takes a pass on the 2026 Olympics

Never has the enthusiasm behind potentially hosting the Olympic Games been so low.

On Wednesday, with a clear-cut 56% of the vote, Calgary said “no thanks” to hosting the 2026 Olympic games.

That leaves just Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy and Stockholm, Sweden in the running, or even willing, to host the world’s largest winter sporting event.

Calgary will become the fourth city this year to withdraw their intention to host the 2026 Olympics, joining Sapporo, Japan; Graz, Austria; Sion, Switzerland; and Erzurum, Turkey.

To win the 2010 Winter Games, Vancouver had to beat out four other bids, a number that was narrowed down from the eight cities that applied just to submit a bid.

Compare that to the upcoming 2022 Winter Games, where Beijing beat out only Almaty, Kazakhstan for the opportunity to host the world.

The massive cost overruns from recent host cities, exemplified by Sochi in 2014, seems to have scared off most cities with hosting potential.

“It’s really sad to see the things in Sochi just go totally unused,” said Calgary’s Brady Leman, who won skicross gold this year in Pyeongchang. “It’s such a waste and that was something that I struggled with back then as well.

“I think that was such a big problem with the Calgary bid was past countries have taken on these huge infrastructure projects and incurred these massive budget overruns because they were building so many new facilities.”

The estimated cost of the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang is $12.9 billion, and that’s for the notably cheaper to run Winter Olympics.

With files from the Canadian Press.