page_title: Whistler Blackcomb
section_title: Renewed Olympic bid
hierarchical_section_title: Whistler Blackcomb / History / Renewed Olympic bid
caption_attribution_description: English: Statue of Ilanaaq the Inunnguaq, mascot of the 2010 Winter Olympics, located at the top of the Whistler Village Gondola at the Whistler Blackcomb resort, Whistler, British Columbia, Canada.
context_page_description: Whistler Blackcomb is a ski resort located in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. By many measures it is the largest ski resort in North America and has the greatest uphill lift capacity. It features the Peak 2 Peak Gondola for moving between Whistler and Blackcomb mountains at the top. With all of this capacity, Whistler Blackcomb is also often the busiest ski resort, often surpassing 2 million visitors a year.
  Whistler was originally conceived as part of a bid to win the 1968 Winter Olympics. Although the bid failed, construction started anyway and the resort opened for the first time in January 1966. Blackcomb mountain, originally a separate entity, opened for business in December 1980. The two resorts underwent a period of intense rivalry through the 1980s and 90s, with constant upgrades and improvements that were unseen at other resorts. By the mid-1990s the area was repeatedly named the best resort in many skiing magazines. Intrawest, the BC real estate firm that developed Blackcomb, purchased Whistler in 1997 and fully merged their operations in 2003.
context_section_description: As Whistler Blackcomb continued to win awards – eight consecutive by 2000 – the resort formed the basis of a renewed Olympics bid, this time for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Calgary also bid for the Canadian entry, as their equipment from the 1988 Winter Olympics was already in place and allowed them to offer a low-cost bid, as did Quebec City, which lost the 2002 bid. Calgary was eliminated in close voting on November 21, 1998, and Vancouver-Whistler won the second round of voting on December 3. In IOC voting Pyeongchang, South Korea won the initial round, which eliminated Salzburg, but in the second round on July 2, 2003, they won every one of Salzburg's supporters and bested Pyeongchang 56-53.
caption: A statue of Ilanaaq, mascot of the 2010 Olympics, located at the top of the Whistler Village Gondola on Whistler Mountain
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