North Carolina and the World University Games

This was from the news release in January. I think they’re joining the bid to help host. I still think the Raleigh-Durham-RTP name will be out front.

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(I’m surprised we never talked about Greensboro being a part of the bid. It was right there in the article when we read it as soon as it came out…)

It’ll definitely be implied very heavily if they don’t mention it outright, as much. Sure, it’s now officially called the North Carolina bid rather than the Triangle bid, but their website and their latest pamphlet still puts the Triangle before Greensboro, if they mention the latter at all in the first place. Their major sponsors (read: $$$) are also entirely Triangle-based, too.

How good our bid is (and how well it stacks up against Chungcheong) will be hard to tell, though, until we learn more about our proposed venues -and how that burden will be spread out, including to Greensboro. We know about Triangle Badminton and the USA Baseball training complex so far, but not much else.

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I’m wondering if Winston-Salem is going to join the party here, especially if Greensboro next door is officially going to host events for this. I think one of the driving forces behind Wake County trying to build the world class indoor track facility slated for Cary is because Winston-Salem already has one. The JDL indoor track seems like it could definitely get used for something like this.

Also, especially if this is a ‘North Carolina’ thing now, I’m wondering if our frenemies down in Charlotte would want to help out? I’m sure they have some facilities that could definitely be useful for something calling for 10,000+ athletes taking part in.

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Maybe. I don’t think it’s a good idea to include Charlotte though -not because of some spite thing (in principle, I’m in the “the more the merrier” camp), but because I feel like our bid becomes weaker the more we spread out our venues geographically.

Venues in past World University Games (at least after the Cold War, which is all I looked at) have almost always stayed within 100mi of each other. The exceptions are Sicily in 1997 and one lake used by the Gwangju (South Korea) games in 2015. Otherwise, it seems like they’ve tried to keep the games as contained as possible so that staff and attendees can easily and quickly move between venues. I think it’s okay if one or two venues are based in the Triad, but it seems unrealistic to expect visitors to crisscross between Charlotte, Greensboro, maybe Winston-Salem, and multiple cities in the Triangle -likely without using a car.

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charlotte usa has no universities……unless you count the commuter college UNC Southwest

Not really a part of the bid criteria beyond the facilities and attendance numbers. The athletes just need to be in college to participate.

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ha, UNC-SW is a new for me, lol.
I know a couple folks who work there, I will have to drop that next time I see them, just to needle them a bit.

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This is a great addition to the bid that makes it a lot stronger. By bringing Irwin Belk Track and the Greensboro Aquatics Center into the bid, you get world-class venues to host arguably the two most prominent competitions, whereas these would have been real weak points of a bid that was limited only to the Triangle.

OTOH, this means that many of most highly attended events will be in Greensboro.

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According to the TBJ, leaders of the American branch of the International University Sports Federation are visiting potential venues for our World University Games bid!

The bid website (see past posts above) still hasn’t publicized some details like venue locations, so that excerpt is the closest thing to a confirmation we’ve had so far that State, Duke, and Central’s campuses are a part of the bid, as are publicly-owned venues like the WakeMed field and Bulls stadium. The bid’s official account also tweeted to essentially confirm the Greensboro Coliseum and Greensboro Aquatic Center are proposed venues, too.

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The legislature allocated $25 million for if NC wins the world university games, which they say would cover about a quarter of the cost to put on the event.

Elon has also been added to the bid.

https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2022/07/06/nc-budget-bill-25-million-world-university-games.html

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For a second I was wondering why Elon musk would go in on this bid, and then I thought Elon the university. :man_facepalming:

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I’m surprised Elon Musk hasn’t tried to buy the University

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Not a whole lot of news here, but the FISU bigwigs are in town this week to inspect the proposed venues.

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1126515/fisu-2027

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Here’s the latest update. Again, not a ton of news here, but it sounds like the FISU folks were very impressed and said a lot of nice things about the proposed venues and the region.

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1126777/fisu

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Good read and update about the bid committees visit!

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Here’s the latest news. Things look pretty good with sponsorships. FISA will select a winning host on Nov. 12.

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1128839/north-carolina-bid-sponsorship

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November 12? That’s tomorrow! How are we feeling about our chances?

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I think we are going to win the bid to host!

I bet we won’t.

:grumpy_cat:

I honestly have no idea, but I feel like the news here should be talking about it. But nope, I bet they don’t even remember

If I remember reading correctly South Korea has hosted this thing twice since the last time the USA hosted it so maybe that plays in our favor? Just my $0.02…

EDIT Jeez I must like repeating myself lol

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