International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach during a press conference. (Source: AP)
Buoyed by the success of hosting the ongoing Asian Games, Indonesia will bid for the 2032 Olympics, the presidential palace said in a statement on Saturday.
The Southeast Asian country has been holding the biggest multi-sport event outside the Olympics since Aug. 18 and apart from some long-running ticketing difficulties, the Games, which conclude on Sunday, have gone fairly smoothly.
“With the experience we have in running the Asian Games, we are sure we can host an even bigger event,” President Joko Widodo said after meeting the heads of the International Olympic Committee and the Asian Olympic Committee.
“Therefore, Indonesia plans to immediately submit itself as a candidate to host the Olympics in 2032.”
Should Indonesia get the opportunity to host the Summer Olympics, it would become the fourth Asian country to do so, after Japan, China and South Korea.
Tokyo will host the next Summer Olympics in 2020, with Paris holding the 2024 Games and Los Angeles confirmed as hosts for four years later.
IOC: Esports has no Olympic future until ‘violence’ removed
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach isn’t certain if, or when, esports might be incorporated into the Olympic Games.
But he was clear in an interview with The Associated Press at the Asian Games on Saturday that “we cannot have in the Olympic program a game that is promoting violence or discrimination.”
Esports is being held for the first time at the Asian Games as a demonstration sport, and could be a full-medal event in four years in Hangzhou, China.
Bach says the violence in many esports is “contradictory to Olympic values.” He also says it must be decided if esports “is a real sport.”
The IOC has been debating many of these questions since holding an esports forum in July at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.