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Originally Posted by PhillyRising
I wonder what Denver might have been had they not backed out of hosting the 1976 Winter Olympics. Now Rocky Mountain rival Salt Lake City is going to host a second Olympics this century.
They won the bid and then backed out after voters there refused to fund the games in 1972. That caused a bit of chaos. The runner up Sion, Switzerland didn't want them. Salt Lake City said they take them before they took back the offer and then Lake Placid was offered as the American host alternative. The IOC said no thanks and gave the games to Innsbruck, Austria.
Seems like an opportunity wasted but would have it made a difference in Denver today?
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Probably not much of a difference. Winter Games don't get the same type of attention that Summer Games do, and if Denver had hosted it would be on the larger side of hosts. Beijing is the largest city to have hosted a Winter Games by quite some distance. Most of the other Winter Games were hosted in regions with less than 2 million residents, and the host locations were forgotten pretty quickly. To mhays's point, the reason Winter Games locations don't get much attention is probably because most people travel for summer weather instead of winter weather.