The City of Oslo, moving forward with its expensive application to host the Winter Olympics in 2022, has formally launched the application process, called it “OL-søknad Oslo 2022” and transferred over the city’s boss for water and sewage to run it.
Eli Grimsby will thus be the first “OL boss,” reported newspaper Aftenposten on Tuesday. Grimsby, originally from the southern coastal town of Flekkefjord, has never attended an Olympics but reportedly was impressed by last year’s Nordic skiing world championships in Oslo. Now she’ll be leading the race to meet a long string of application deadlines leading up to 2015, when the venue for the 2002 Olympics will be announced.
Norway’s various athletic associations agreed, not surprisingly, to support the Olympic application in Oslo at a special meeting over the weekend. Now it’s Grimsby’s job to lead the effort.
She also sees the Olympics as not just a sporting event but a means of building new facilities and other infrastructure in Oslo, which faces major population growth. Grimsby, age 49, is officially on leave from her job as head of water and sewage department. Now she’ll be concentrating on snow and ice.
Views and News staff