u/Followlost

Canada and the U.S. just finished co-hosting the FIFA World Cup, so why not take that model and apply it to the Winter Olympics?
Instead of choosing a host city, choose a host region.
Every Great Lake would have at least one participating city or community. Toronto, Hamilton and Niagara around Lake Ontario. Buffalo on Erie. Detroit and Windsor connect Erie and Huron. Chicago gives you Lake Michigan. Thunder Bay or Duluth gives you Superior. Then Lake Placid and the Adirondacks provide the serious mountain venues and an existing Olympic winter sports complex.
The whole point would be that no city has to build an entire Olympics.
Chicago will never host a conventional Winter Games because it doesn’t have mountains. Neither will Toronto or Detroit. But they have arenas, airports, hotels, transit, audiences and infrastructure that a Winter Olympics needs. Lake Placid has the mountains and Olympic facilities they don’t have.
That could also become the theme of the Games: cooperation.
Two countries, five Great Lakes, dozens of communities and the Adirondacks contributing what each already does best. Niagara Falls could be the symbolic heart of the Games, where the two host nations meet, rather than making either an American or Canadian city the centre of everything.
And instead of spending billions trying to turn one city into a temporary Olympic universe, put the money into infrastructure the region actually needs afterward: rail, border crossings, existing venues, waterfronts and Great Lakes restoration.
There is even a convenient visual identity: Five Great Lakes. Five Olympic rings. The five lake shapes could become the basis of the graphic system and sport pictograms.
And the Golden Horseshoe is right in the middle of it all, giving you the pursuit of Olympic gold.
The Great Lakes and Adirondacks 2042
Five lakes. One mountain range. Two nations. One Winter Games.

I’m hoping there are communities that won’t mind me sifting through the comment sections