How Cairns can win if Brisbane hosts the 2032 Olympic Games

Cairns could play a key role in the 2032 Olympic Games after the International Olympic Committee voted unanimously in favour of giving Brisbane’s bid “preferred host status”.

A LEADING Far North sports administrator has urged powerbrokers to act on venue upgrades as soon as possible to give Cairns its best crack at cashing in on a potential Brisbane Olympic Games in 2023.

The Games are more than a decade away, but Brisbane and southeast Queensland is in the box seat to host the world’s premier sporting showpiece event after the International Olympic Committee granted the Sunshine State capital “preferred host status” last week.

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The bulk of the 2032 Olympics is proposed to be staged between the Gold and Sunshine coasts, but AFL Cairns managing director Gary Young said that while FNQ could cash in as a training base, work should start as soon as possible to ensure our venues are in tiptop condition.

“Coaches and athletes are looking at potential venues many years beforehand to get a feel for this part of the world,” Young said. “Our region has a real chance at being one of those training bases.”

The home of Aussie rules football in Cairns, Cazalys Stadium, is arguably FNQ’s best playing surface for elite sport.

And the Westcourt venue is open to throwing the doors open to visiting nations and athletes - provided they don’t completely take over the venue and force unrealistic changes to its primary function, which is as the home of Aussie rules footy in FNQ.

THE ROLE FNQ CAN PLAY AT 2032 GAMES

TROPICAL North Queensland could play a role in the 2032 Olympic Games after the International Olympic Committee voted unanimously in favour of giving Brisbane’s bid “preferred host status”.

The bulk of the Games is set to be staged across South East Queensland between the Sunshine and Gold Coasts, but regional areas will also benefit if the world’s biggest sporting showpiece is held in Australia.

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Australian Athletics members Rhydian Cowley and Katie Hayward training at Barlow Park before the IAAF World Athletics Championships PICTURE: ANNA ROGERS

The IOC’s Feasibility Assessment for a Brisbane Games lists Barlow Park as a potential venue for football preliminaries, alongside seven other cities including Sydney, Melbourne, Townsville and Toowoomba.

FNQ Football zone administrator Alex Srhoj said the benefits to football would be limitless if Cairns were to host a fixture or be the training base for visiting teams.

“One of the most exciting things is how vibrant the football culture is,” Srhoj said.

“There’s so many different cultures represented in FNQ’s football family.”

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Cairns MP Michael Healy said the 2018 Commonwealth Games proved TNQ could work in with key sporting events when Cairns Convention Centre hosted preliminary rounds of the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.

But the region could also be a preferred training base for a range of sports, including team sports like football and basketball, athletics, swimming and mountain biking, if included in the Games program.

“From a training perspective, we’d have to be in a pretty position,” Healy said.

“The Tobruk pool is world class, hockey venue is fantastic, we’ve got Barlow Park – we have a range of great facilities.

“I’d be advocating for as much as we can.”

It might be what’s needed for Cairns to compete with Townsville and other regional centres.

Since opening the $293m Queensland Country Bank Stadium, Townsville has hosted big-ticket events like an Elton John concert last February, the Jeff Horn-Tim Tszyu megafight last August, and last week’s NRL All Stars clash.

The recent opening of a state-of-the-art High Performance Centre could make Townsville irresistible, but Healy was quick to point out how Cairns could hold its own across several sports.

“If we play our cards right, who knows?” Healy said.

“Nobody’s talked about mountain biking, for example. There’s some great mountain biking facilities at Smithfield, there’s the Wangetti Trail project as well.

“We have to look at what we’ve got, and what we’re building the infrastructure for.”

OLYMPICS A BIG BOOST FOR CAIRNS COFFERS

HOSTING Olympic competition may be on the minds of sports fans, but Cairns Mayor Bob Manning is most excited about how a 2032 Games in the state’s southeast could supercharge international tourism to Tropical North Queensland.

Sports fans are clamouring to find a way Cairns and Tropical NQ could host events despite the bulk of competition to be held between the Gold and Sunshine coasts, but Mr Manning (above) is most excited by the potential for large-scale tourism – and the economic windfall it could generate.

“What we found with Sydney was we had enormous before and post-Olympic Games tourism,” he said. “They didn’t want to go to Melbourne or Perth, they wanted to explore the Great Barrier Reef, and visit the rainforest.”

That meant more people visiting TNQ’s best sights and experiences, more tourists in restaurants and more money in the coffers of businesses.

Mr Manning questioned how hosting the Olympics could affect future state government funds for capital works, but said Cairns would throw open its doors to being a training base for athletes or teams: “If they want to use Cairns, we will open it up.”

Originally published as How Cairns can win if Brisbane hosts the 2032 Olympic Games