Men's Handball EHF European Championship 2026 (Qualifiers Phase 2, Week 2)

Even Norway & Sweden did not want to bid with all the nonsense, so we ended up with Sochi & Beijing.

What smaller countries ever hosted the Olympics though? Sarajevo 1984 is probably the last I can imagine and they would never host one in XXI century. The "grandiose" switch definitely happened in Winter Games, I'd never predict China hosting WOG even in early 00s. But the costs have driven many Summer OG candidates away, the bidding process is dead and IOC basically has to beg anyone to even come forward or else we'd have every Summer OG in the Middle East for a very long time.

team   MOGULS Cali Carr* Makayla Gerken-Schofield Mateo Jeannesson FREESKI PARK & PIPE Zoe Atkin (Halfpipe) Tom Greenway* (Slopestyle & Big Air) Chris McCormick (Slopestyle & Big Air) Kirsty Muir (Slopestyle & Big Air) James Pouch* (Slopestyle & Big Air) Liam Richards* (Halfpipe) SNOWBOARD PARK & PIPE Mia Brookes (Slopestyle & Big Air) Maisie Hill* (Slopestyle & Big Air) Txema Mazet-Brown* (Slopestyle & Big Air) Katie Ormerod (Slopestyle & Big Air) Siddhartha Ullah* (Halfpipe) SNOWBOARD CROSS Charlotte Bankes Huw Nightingale SKI CROSS Ollie Davies Scott Johns*  

All those grandiose & expensive Winter Games that made it impossible for smaller countries to bid I'd say.

But yeah, this was fun. Too bad we got a safety car at the end when the rain restarted, because the immense chaos right after both McLaren's went off for a bit was just hilarious