Olympic Games possible in Africa: Rogge

PATSCHERKOFEL, Austria - The International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said Tuesday he would be delighted if an African city bid to host the Olympic Games after 2020.

The IOC already has six candidates for the 2020 Games: Baku (Azerbaijan), Doha (Qatar), Istanbul (Turkey), Madrid (Spain), Rome (Italy) and Tokyo (Japan). The 2020 host city will be chosen next year.

African countries will have to wait for the 2024 Games to have an opportunity to bid for the biggest multi-sport event in the world.

Durban, South Africa, showed interest in hosting the 2020 Games but eventually decided not to bid. Africa is the only continent with the exception of Antartica not to have been awarded the Olympic Games.

Rogge remains hopeful that Africa will bid in future.

"To come to Africa there should be a good candidate and we would be delighted to see a good candidate coming from Africa, this has not been the case for the competition for 2020 but I hope after 2020 there is a good African city making it," he said during his visit to the Alpine skiing venue at the Innsbruck Winter Youth Olympic Games.

Rogge does not expect large numbers of winter Olympians to come from Africa. "It's a difficult task because obviously you need the geography and you need the climate for I would say about two thirds of the winter sports," he said.

"The other ones we need is ice halls."

"What we can do is to give scholarships to athletes to come and train with established countries, which we do by the way, and people perform well but it's never going to be a mass participation," said Rogge.