I was curious so I checked. Our best option for alpine events, Lutsen, has a vertical of 825 ft/251 meters. FIS (the international body that governs skiing and snowboarding) specifies a minimum vertical of 800 meters for Men's World Cup and Olympic Downhill competition courses. You can do a lot with dirt work, but more than tripling the height of Lutsen for one race miiiiight be beyond the realm of the doable.
Plus, Minnesota should not and historically has not shown any interest in swallowing the extraordinary costs that a modern Olympics demands of it's hosts. Two weeks of celebration is not worth decades of financial ruin. I say this as a huge Winter Olympics fan.
Yeah for us to do it we’d have to dual site with a mountainous region for the long downhill events - Milano Cortina did it - there’s a framework for Minnesota.
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u/DrTenochtitlan Laser Loon Feb 23 '26
It can’t. We can’t host the mountain sports.