Brisbane was named the Olympic host city for 2032 on Wednesday, sparking wild celebrations and fireworks as it became the third Australian city to do so following Melbourne and Sydney.
After delegates voted 72 to five with three abstentions at the IOC session in Tokyo, Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, announced the largely expected result.
"The International Olympic Committee has the honor to announce that the Games of the 35th Olympiad are awarded to Brisbane, Australia," Bach stated.
The announcement was met with shouts from Australian delegates in Tokyo, while fireworks lit up the sky in Brisbane, and audiences assembled for the voting went wild.
Brisbane appeared to be a foregone conclusion after the IOC's 15-strong executive board unanimously proposed it as the sole candidate for 2032 in June.
"I'm ecstatic – I'm so proud of my state and its people." "I never imagined this would happen in my lifetime," Queensland state premier Anna Palaszczuk said.
"We" Brisbane, we've done it! This is terrific, this is incredible — tonight is your night, so take advantage of it."
Australia has already hosted the Olympics twice, in Melbourne in 1956 and Sydney in 2000, with Melbourne in 1956 is widely regarded as one of the most successful Games in modern history.
Hundreds of people flocked to Brisbane's Southbank riverside neighborhood for the announcement, which featured a large screen showing the city's final proposal to the IOC.
One of those in the masked crowd, Rhys Cush, 24, said he planned to work at the 2032 Olympics as well as attend as a spectator.
"I'm a huge fan of yours." He told AFP, "I even watched the softball this morning." "I'm super excited about having the Olympics coming here."
Lauren Granger, 42, expressed her optimism that the 2032 Olympics would recapture the excitement of Sydney's victorious 2000 Olympics.
"We flew down to Sydney and we were at the Olympics and it was just such a great experience for our family," she recalled.
"That was 20 years ago so we'd love to be able to relive that in 2032 with our kids."
'It was a historic day,' says the narrator.
Brisbane, with a population of 2.3 million people and a coastline lined with glistening sands, is viewed as more laid-back and less cosmopolitan than Australia's enormous southern capitals.
Brisbane and adjacent towns in Queensland state, including the Gold Coast, which hosted the 2018 Commonwealth Games, will host venues.
The Olympics are expected to raise Brisbane's image, making it more appealing to tourists who use it as a base for visiting attractions such as the Great Barrier Reef.
According to a story in The Australian newspaper, the Games will cost Au$5 billion and will be held at a rebuilt Gabba cricket venue.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, "It's a historic day not just for Brisbane and Queensland, but for the entire country,"
"Only global cities can secure the Olympic Games, so this is fitting recognition for Brisbane's standing across our region and the world."
The IOC has finally decided on hosts for the next three Summer Olympics, with Paris hosting the event in 2024 and Los Angeles hosting the event in 2028.
The 2032 Olympics were the first to be awarded under a new election mechanism introduced in June 2019 to combat application fees and a lack of genuine proposals.
After Rome, Hamburg, and Budapest all pulled out of the running for the 2024 Games, Bach argued that the process had "produced too many losers"
Bidding towns have been more difficult to find in recent years as expenses have risen and the economic benefits of hosting the Games remain a mystery.
The vote came two days before the tumultuous Tokyo Olympics, which will begin behind closed doors on Friday following a year of postponement due to the pandemic.
