LOS ANGELES, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- According to an online poll conducted by local media in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, 90 percent of the residents favor the city hosting the Olympic Winter Games again in 2026 or 2030.
666 voters took part in the poll conducted by KUTV 2, just one day after a group of local business, community and elected state leaders announced the formation of an official Olympic/Paralympic Exploratory Committee (OEC), a likely step toward launching a bid for a second Olympics in the state capital of Utah.
It is only two days after Innsbruck voters rejected a bid from the Austrian city and three days after the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) claimed that they would pursue a Winter Games for the country and wanted to be part of any upcoming discussions.
Since Reno-Tahoe in Nevada and Denver, the state capital of Colorado, both have showed interest in bidding for the Games, the USOC said they would begin discussing the organization of a domestic selection process and make final decision before next March.
According to the regulation of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), who launched the bid process for 2026 Olympic Winter Games last month, the application deadline for the Games is March 31 of 2018 with the final selection scheduled for September 2019.
Sion in Switzerland and Calgary in Canada are other potential bidders, along with Almaty in Kazakhstan, Stockholm in Sweden and Sapporo in Japan.
If Salt Lake City was awarded the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, having previously hosted the Games in 2002, the city would welcome the Games back to the U.S. before Los Angeles, who has been selected to host its third Olympic Games in 2028.
