Calgary plans to upgrade existing Olympic infrastructure, such as the Oval, in its bid for the '26 Gamesgetty images
There is "certainly a desire in Calgary to revisit the glorious past" and use it as a chance to refurbish the city's "Olympic legacy and bring it back to buff it and shine it up," according to the Calgary Herald's Meghan Potkins. Calgary "sees itself as a winter sports sector industry," and there are many Olympic winter athletes that "live here year round and train here and the city is interested in capitalizing on that." Potkins said there is certainly an "argument being made for all sorts of spinoff benefits" in basic infrastructure upgrades. Potkins: "One of the things about this bid is that it's fairly conservative. There's not a lot of goodies to offer here, there's basically upgrades to existing Winter Olympic infrastructure like the Oval, some wind sport facilities for skiing. ... There's not a ton of things you can point to that would be these big, sexy projects that sometimes get pinned onto these Olympic bids." Potkins said the "bid committee behind it will tell you" that the Winter Games is $3B (all figures C), not $5.2, and that is "because that's how much they want governments and the taxpayers to pay up." Potkins said, "They're saying that the rest of that amount will covered in private revenue that would come from things like the IOC, sponsorships, ticketing, domestic sales, merchandising, licensing, all these things would help cover the cost of actually operating the games ... There's no way that's the final figure though because those don't count for inflation and those aren't the 2026 dollars. They're the 2018 dollars" ("10/3 Podcast," CALGARYHERALD.com, 9/27).
