South Korea savoured success Thursday in its eight-year campaign to host the Winter Olympics, a victory which brings the event to Asia for only the third time in its history. “Pyeongchang achieved its dream,” read a huge digital screen at the entrance to the alpine resort, which lost out on the 2010 and 2014 games but secured a crushing victory in the contest for the 2018 event.
The town won outright in the first round of voting by the International Olympic Committee in the South African city of Durban on Wednesday, trouncing European rivals Munich and Annecy. Revellers in the resort 180 kilometres east of Seoul danced, hugged and punched the air in joy when a giant TV monitor carried the vote announcement just after midnight local time. Fireworks lit up the night sky. President Lee Myung-Bak, who travelled to Durban to make a presentation to the IOC, called it a victory for all Koreans.
“At last! Pyeongchang gets Winter Games,” said the Korea JoongAng Daily in a euphoric headline. The country has now secured its fourth global sporting event following the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics, the 2002 Football World Cup co-hosted with Japan, and next month’s World Athletics Championships in Daegu.
It will only be the second Asian nation to host a winter Games, after Japan’s Sapporo in 1972 and Nagano in 1998. “It is such a great pleasure and honour for a small Asian country like us to become a major world sports powerhouse…now we should start building high-speed railways, highways and other transportation networks,” said the Maeil Business Newspaper.
