Olympics: Beijing will host the 2022 Winter Olympics

KUALA LUMPUR - The Chinese city of Beijing has emerged victorious in the bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced on Friday.

It won a secret ballot of IOC members at the Kuala Lumpur convention centre, beating Kazakhstan's Almaty, which had hoped to bring the Games to Central Asia for the first time.

Beijing, which hosted the 2008 Olympics, will become the first city to stage both summer and winter Games.

Six cities were originally in the race to follow 2018 hosts Pyeongchang in South Korea.

But after Russia spent more than US$51 billion (S$70 billion) to stage the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, the European cities of Oslo, Stockholm, Krakow and Lviv all withdrew because of cost fears and local politics.

Beijing said it will spend US$3.06 billion to organise the 24th Winter Games. That does not include an estimated US$5 billion it will spend to build a high-speed train link from Beijing to Zhangjiakou, where many mountain events will be held.

The bid team had said it is keeping the budget down by using 11 venues from the 2008 Games - which was estimated to have cost more than US$40 billion to stage - including the Bird's Nest stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies, and the Water Cube aquatics centre for curling.

Meanwhile, the Swiss city of Lausanne will host the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics. It beat Brasov, Romania for the right to stage the third edition of the Youth Olympics.