On the Way to Olympics
Zakopane might help Krakow
Kraków has lost out the opportunity of at least billion dollars worth of investment in infrastructure improvements after a local referendum voted not to back a bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, the city's Mayor Jacek Majchrowski has warned.
He claimed that the Polish Government were fully behind the campaign and were ready to invest heavily in the region, including overhauling the local transport system, if they had been awarded the Games.
"According to my calculations, we lost 3 billion zloty [£586 million/$980 million/€720 million] that were due to be invested," Majchrowski told Polish Radio.
"This is a big deal and it will cause a lot of trouble.
"But so people decided [in the referendum].
"The idea of the Olympics was that they would serve as a sword with which we would create a bypass, a new road to Zakopane and an entire mass of other investments."
Source: the Press Office of the Russian Ski Association, www.insidethegames.biz
