Sapporo election could restart bid for 2030 Winter Olympics

Sapporo's bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics has been slowed — but not stopped — by fallout from the still-developing corruption scandal around the 2020 Tokyo Games.

The pursuit could resume if Sapporo Mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto is re-elected on Sunday, as expected, against two anti-Olympic candidates.

The northern Japanese city suspended actively promoting the bid three months ago, hoping damage from Tokyo's scandal would fade from view.

It hasn't entirely and Sapporo, once the favourite, now has an uncertain Olympic future.

A January poll by the regional newspaper Hokkaido Shimbun showed 67 per cent were opposed to holding the Olympics.

Sapporo has declined to call a public referendum over the Olympics, although the mayor's re-election could be touted as a substitute. Public votes over staging the Olympics almost always fail.

Victor Matheson, who studies sports economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, suggested a public vote before awarding any Games.

"I think a nice simple change — that the IOC would never go along with — is that every bid should be required to hold a popular vote before being finally awarded," Matheson said in an email. "That promotes transparency, reduces the more extravagant impulses of the IOC, and limits that ability of autocratic countries from hosting the games (although they could obviously sponsor sham elections)."

Akimoto is promising "transparent and clean Games," saying the event will help the city of nearly 2 million and the surrounding region market itself.

Sapporo was viewed as the favourite of the International Olympic Committee until arrests began last summer connected to bid-rigging, vote-buying, and bribery around the Tokyo Olympics.

At the heart of the