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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Bach: IOC will not reopen 2022 Olympic bid race

Associated Press

LONDON – The IOC will not reopen the bidding process for the 2022 Winter Olympics, even though only two cities are left in the troubled race following Oslo’s withdrawal.

“The IOC is sticking to its commitments,” IOC President Thomas Bach told The Associated Press on Thursday. “We have issued the invitation for bidding. There is a clear and transparent procedure. We will follow this procedure with two candidates.”

Oslo became the fourth city to drop out of the bidding on Wednesday after the Norwegian government declined to provide financial support, citing concerns over the cost of hosting the games.

The move leaves Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, as the only two remaining candidates. Neither are established winter sports countries, and both are targets of human rights critics.

“We are in the middle of a procedure,” Bach said. “We cannot and we do not want to change the regulations in the middle of the race, given the fact that we still have two very interesting candidatures with a very diverse approach.”

The IOC will select the 2022 host city on July 31, 2015, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Beijing, which staged the 2008 Olympics, is seeking to become the first city to host both summer and winter games. Almaty, located in Central Asia, hosted the 2011 Winter Asian Games and will stage the 2017 Winter University Games.

Stockholm; Krakow, Poland; and Lviv, Ukraine, withdrew their 2022 bids in recent months.