Intro:

The Kazakh city of Almaty, Beijing in China and Oslo in Norway were declared on Monday (7th July) as the three official candidate cities to host the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Script:

SOUNDBITE (English) Andrey Kryukov, Almaty bid executive board member:

"We host the 2011 Asian Winter Games. This is continental Asian Games.... Winter Games, which was one thousand athletes and was very successful. Next big event, we will host in 2017 is the University Games, the World University Games with 5,000 participants which is almost the same number of participants as Olympic Games. That's why we are.... consistently like to follow this, to be in the top competition. That's why we are bidding."