1984: Gothenburg was the main city in the Swedish candidacy with Falun, Åre and Ragunda (Hammarstrand) as co-applicants. It came third in the poll with only ten votes. Sarajevo won before Sapporo.
1988: There was no new attempt for Gothenburg, but on the contrary for Falun, who applied with Åre as the alpine competition location. Sweden managed to knock out Cortina d’Ampezzo in the first round of voting, but in the second, Calgary was too difficult. The Canadians’ victory figures were written at 48-31.
1992: Falun had a bleeding tooth and searched again. The concept was basically the same as four years earlier. They knocked out Norwegian Lillehammer in a tie-breaker, but came third in the final round. Albertville got the games before Sofia.
1994: Just two years later, it was time to vote on the Winter Olympics again. Falun had grown tired and instead Östersund stepped forward as the Swedish candidate. The Swedes were certain of victory at the vote in South Korea, but like so many in the past in winter sports, Norway drew the longest straw and Lillehammer won the final round with 45–39.
1998: Östersund tried again and advanced to the third round of voting in Birmingham, but was six votes short of reaching the final. Nagano vs Salt Lake City 46-42.
2002: Östersund refused to give up, but Salt Lake City had learned its lesson from four years earlier and heavily anointed many of the IOC members ahead of the vote in Budapest, delivering a landslide victory with 54 votes to second-placed Östersund’s 14.
2022: 20 years later, Sweden entered the game again with, now with Stockholm as the intended host city. But the application failed already a year before the vote, when the city of Stockholm withdrew. The Games went to Beijing after a narrow final victory against Almaty in Kazakhstan.
2026: Stockholm made another attempt together with Åre, but fell in the vote against Milano Cortina with the vote numbers 47–34. The fact that Sweden did not have the state guarantee in place was decisive.
2030: Third time gilt for Stockholm? No, the candidacy went out surprisingly even before the application process went into sharp mode, at the same time that the IOC chose the French Alps as the host.
