The surest sign that the bid process for hosting the Olympics is broken is actually not the trail of bribe money or crony-rich government contracts at the feet of International Olympic Committee members.

Sure, bribery might – might, maybe, allegedly, perhaps – be how a now abandoned Olympic Village got built in some muddy, bulldozed acreage south of Sochi, Russia, rather than in Salzburg, Austria, home to Mozart, the Sound of Music and postcard pictures.

That's the cause, though, not the effect.

Vladimir Putin, left, and IOC President Thomas Bach sit at a cafe near the Olympic Park in Sochi. (AP) More

The effect is the bidding for the 2022 Winter Games, which is now down to just two cities. The final vote comes next summer.

There's Beijing, China, which doesn't actually sit within 120 miles of a usable ski mountain, and there's Almaty, Kazakhstan, which in its bid touted itself as "the world's largest landlocked nation."

It's down to these two cities not because the IOC narrowed the field, but because every other city in the entire world said no.

Seriously, every other city said no.

That even includes cities that previously said yes and made it deep into the bidding process only to stare directly into the corrupt, humiliating voting system, not to mention eventual unnecessary construction costs, environmental effects, blown resources and white elephants built to opulent IOC code. They promptly high-tailed it the other way.

Russia said it spent $51 billion hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. What, no one else is interested in footing that bill?

Certainly not Oslo, Norway, not even at the bargain rate of an estimated $5.4 billion in a nation of just five million people. It once wanted desperately to host the 2022 Winter Olympics and its bid was so perfect that it was considered the favorite to win. Then the country held a vote earlier this year and 55.9 percent of Norwegians opposed.

Wednesday the Norwegian government effectively pulled the bid. Norwegians are known for the ability to cross country ski really fast and being so friendly they beg visitors to come experience their picturesque nation. Since this involved the IOC however, they decided against having visitors come experience their picturesque nation to watch them cross country ski really fast.

They aren't alone. Previous finalist Krakow, Poland, saw 70 percent voter opposition and pulled its application. A majority felt the same way in Germany and Switzerland, killing bids in Munich and St. Moritz respectively. In Sweden the majority party rejected funding the proposed games in Stockholm.

And that doesn't count all the places that didn't even bother to try, including the United States, which isn't sure when it will bid again after Chicago somehow, someway came in fourth in an effort to host the 2016 Summer Games. Rio de Janeiro won and still has practically nothing built, and IOC executives keep complaining nothing will be ready on time. Gee, what a shocker.

Essentially the only places interested in hosting the 2022 games are countries where actual citizens aren't allowed a real say in things – communist China and Kazakhstan, a presidential republic that coincidentally has only had one president since it split from the old USSR in 1989.

Essentially the entire world has told the IOC it's a corrupt joke.

"The vote is not a signal against the sport, but against the non-transparency and the greed for profit of the IOC," Ludwig Hartmann, a German politician said when his country said no. "I think all possible Olympic bids in Germany are now out of question. The IOC has to change first. It's not the venues that have to adapt to the IOC, but the other way around."

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