Democracy at play – Olympic bid rejected by the citizens of the host city

Jørn Hansen
Department of Sports Science and Clinical Biomechanics

In 2022 the Winter Olympic Games were held in Beijing in China. The Games could have been in Oslo or in Munich, but in Munich the people voted against the Games and in Norway the government decided that they would not accept the requirement from IOC for the Games. It is no longer exceptional to say no to the Olympic Games, but in 1976, Denver in Colorado was the first city to prevent them from taking place.

Adam Berg is associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and in his book, he gives a thorough analysis of Colorado voters’ rejection of the 1976 Winter Olympic Games. The book consists of three main parts: Part 1: “The Bidders”; Part 2: “The Opponents”; and Part 3: “The Fate and Legacy of Denver ’76” and finishes with an Epilogue: “The Games Go On”.

The sources Adam Berg uses consist of letters, magazines, newspapers, documents (archives), and interviews with some of the key individuals involved in the protests of the Games.

Part 1: “The Bidders” is about the arguments for those who found it desirable to get the Games and consists of four chapters. The first chapter, “The Origins of Olympic Dreams”, is about the historical development in Denver and Colorado, about the belief in growth and tourism that would turn Colorado into America’s Switzerland. The protagonists refer to the success of the Olympic Summer Games in Los Angelos in 1932, and that already in 1949 there was a proposal to bring the 1956 Winter Games to Colorado.

The second chapter, “Growth Crusaders”, demonstrates how, beginning in 1963, a collection of leading businessmen and politicians began to assemble a new Colorado-based Olympic bid for the Winter Games in 1976. Their effort was based on a long-time belief in growth, a reliance in tourism, decades of federal support for development in the western states, and a century of regime politics in Denver. At the same time, investors in ski resorts, bankers, utility providers, construction companies, politician at all levels, and newspaper editors worked in unison to bring the Winter Games to Colorado. The group made rather optimistic statements. Governor Love predicted 150,000 spectators would come to the Winter Games and that, afterward, the number of annual out-of-state tourist would more than double, from 7 million to 15 million. In 1968, President Nixon decided that the Denver Olympic Committee would receive full cooperation from his office. Before that the United States Olympic Committee had already chosen Denver, Colorado to be the nation’s nominee to host the 1976 Winter Games.

During the history of Colorado, Denver increasingly became an island for old people, poor people and minority groups surrounded by a suburban sea of middle-class white families.

In the third chapter, “Faking an Olympic City”, Adam Berg points out that Colorado’s bid for the 1976 Winter Games was unrealistic. In his words: “It was designed purely to satisfy the IOC and represented probably the most dishonest proposal in the Olympic history” (p. 40). Besides an unclear economic situation there were poor snow-conditions in Colorado for both Nordic and Alpine skiing. “The Olympic Village” could be established by sending 9.000 students on a special vacation during the Games to make space available for athletes!

The fourth chapter, “A Mass Soft Sell”, covers how the Denver Olympic Committee sold the bid to IOC by lobbying and by inviting the IOC members and their wives to Colorado – as was common practice in Olympic bidding processes at that time.

Part 2: “The Opponents” is about those who were against the Winter Games and consists also of four chapters. Chapter five, “Post-Civil Rights Advocacy in the City”, deals with the opponents in the city. During the history of Colorado, Denver increasingly became an island for old people, poor people and minority groups surrounded by a suburban sea of middle-class white families. African Americans and Mexican Americans were prisoners of their own poverty and ethnicity and the economic development that existed everywhere around them, especially among the “Growth Crusaders” who wanted the Winter Games to come to Denver. Brown and Black residents of Denver came to see the 1976 Winter Olympics as a vehicle for combating these challenges.

Chapter six, “Middle-Class Environmentalism in the Foothills”, analyzes the awakening protest among the middle-class living west of the city. In general, they were not against the Winter Games, but gradually became aware that certain parts of the state could be oversold. They prized quiet naturalistic settings, and they did not want to see Olympic structures in their line of sight. For many of them excessive costs and DOC’s (Denver Olympic Organizing Committee) dishonesty became the primary motives for wanting to nix the games.

Chapter seven, “A Liberal Tax Revolt and the Public Relations Battle”, is the story about the critical take off against DOC from 1968 to 1970. Two Democratic Colorado House representatives became the first major figures to suggest state authorities to reject the Denver Olympic bid outright. They criticized that DOC did not know how much the Games would cost and were afraid that the Winter Olympics would be a tax burden to the people of the State of Colorado. In 1971 the Rocky Mountain News began to publish critical articles that examined the DOC’s bid and provided reasons to doubt not only the benefits of hosting the Games but the trustworthiness of the DOC. Gradually the seeds for an anti-Olympic uprising were provided.

Chapter 8, “Direct Democracy for Middle America”, is the story about how a small group of organizers formed Citizens for Colorado’s Future (CCF) that led the charge to place an initiative on Colorado ballots to stop public funding of the Olympics and reject the event once and for all. CCF became a coalition-builder for all opponents to the Winter Games and can be seen as typical of the 1970s. The members conveyed a desire to import genuine democratic practice into Colorado, challenge the state’s political authorities, and reorient its overall trajectory. In this manner it makes sense that the group chose the title it did instead of something such as “Citizen Against the Olympics”. In June 1972, CCF turned in petitions containing more than 77,000 names, or 26,000 more than needed. The vote on public funding of the Winter Olympic was coming.

Part 3: “The Fate and Legacy of Denver” consists of three chapters and an Epilogue. Chapter 9, “The DOC’s Credibility and the Rhetoric of Olympism”, deals with how DOC tried to avoid the defeat in the ballots to come. One of DOC’s big problems was that Avery Brundage, the American president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) wanted to get rid of the Winter Games and therefore was delighted when things began to go wrong in Denver. At the IOC meeting in Japan in 1972 the executive committee of the IOC, by unanimous vote, had decided that the honor of hosting the 1976 Winter Olympics be withdrawn from Denver. After that, DOC desperately tried to reactivate the status as host by focusing on Olympism, that the Olympics was an unmatched vehicle for uniting people across the globe and celebrating human excellence. In that way DOC tried to convince voters that hosting the games represented something other than what it really was, as Adam Berg has pointed out: a growth-oriented commercial endeavor.

Chapter 10, “The Event Coalition and the Rights of Citizenship”, is the story about the definitive decision. In November1972 the result showed that 537,400 voted “yes” while 358,906 voted “no” to reject the Winter Games. The spokesmen against the Winter Games came primarily form the white middle-class, but the two counties with largest percentages of Mexican American and African American produced the highest percentages of ballots cast to bar state funding of Denver ’76. By contrast, among 139 Denver Olympic supporters in the opposite committees, sixty were millionaires, sixty-nine were corporate presidents or board chairs, forty-six worked as presidents of banks or as bank directors, and four served in the Denver Chamber of Commerce.

Chapter 11, “The Momentum of the Moment”, analyzes what happened afterwards. For a period, one of the two Democrats were elected as Governor for Colorado instead of Governor Love. There were some environmental initiatives, but there was no gain for the deprived Mexican Americans and African Americans. The legacy of Denver ’76 is multifaceted, but part of the lesson is that a common enemy does not mean a common cause.

In the Epilogue, Adam Berg discusses among other things the future of the Olympic Games since several attempts to host the Games have been obstructed by ballots in the potential host city, post-Detroit. According to the author, the main reason for this development is that the politics of hosting the Olympics still is based the politics of growth. For that reason it is easier to host the Olympics in authoritarian states.

Adam Berg has made a well-researched and thorough analysis of Denver ’76. In my opinion it must be the book about The Olympics That Never Happened.

Copyright © Jørn Hansen 2023