South Korea wins 2018 Winter Games

Associated Press

DURBAN, South Africa

The victory margin was massive and the message loud and clear: Persistence paid off for South Korea in its third consecutive bid for the Winter Olympics.

After two stinging defeats in a decade of trying, the South Korean city of Pyeongchang finally won its Olympic prize Wednesday, burying two European rivals in a landslide vote for the 2018 Winter Games and bringing them back to the lucrative Asian market.

“We are grateful to people who persevere and are patient, and each time the bid has improved,” International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said.

The Koreans lost narrowly in the final round of voting for the 2010 and 2014 Games, but this time they defeated Munich and Annecy, France, by a one-sided margin that few had expected.

“Koreans have been waiting for 10 years to host the Winter Games,” bid leader Cho Yang-ho said. “Now we have finally achieved our dream.”

Needing 48 votes for victory, Pyeongchang won an overwhelming 63 of the 95 cast in the first round of the secret ballot. Munich received 25 and Annecy seven.

“I was surprised by the one-round victory and I was surprised by the margin,” Rogge said.

Pyeongchang will be the third city in Asia and first outside Japan to host the Winter Games. Japan held the games in Sapporo in 1972 and Nagano in 1998.

The Korean victory followed the IOC’s trend in recent votes, having taken the Winter Games to Russia (Sochi) for the first time in 2014 and giving South America its first Olympics with the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.

“It’s kind of like the Rio situation where it’s time,” Canadian IOC member Dick Pound said.