Kasper conceived the bid idea with fellow Swiss Rene Fasel, the International Ice Hockey Federation president who represents winter sports on the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) ruling board. The two federation chiefs add heavyweight backing to the Davos-St. Moritz cause and Kasper believes the Swiss Alpine resorts can present a bid with a difference.

With Vancouver having staged the 2010 Games, the next two editions of the event will travel to Sochi and PyeongChang. Kasper feels Davos and St. Moritz offer the secure, high-class hosting required for an Olympics while also offering the potential for an intimate Games akin to Lillehammer’s hugely successful 1994 Olympics. “You need the comfort of the big city but preferably without the city—and that is what you have in those places,” Kasper, an IOC member for 12 years, told the Associated Press. “I hear so many colleagues saying we have to go back to normal size, we have to go back to winter. To go to capital cities, it doesn’t give you the right ambiance.”

However, the Davos-St. Moritz bid still faces a number of obstacles before it can truly get off the ground. The bid first needs approval from the Swiss Olympic Association’s sports federations at an April meeting. In November, a referendum of almost 200 districts in the canton of Graubunden will then decide whether a formal bid is launched. “This will be very difficult,” Kasper acknowledged. “Why should the people of Arosa or Laax or Flims say, ‘We shall spend our tax money for the rich people in St. Moritz?’ If they say no, that is the end of it.”

A successful bid would see St. Moritz become the first three-time Winter Olympics host after previously hosting both the 1928 and 1948 Games. Kasper admits the project for his hometown is a deeply personal one, adding: “My grandfather was involved in 1928, and my father was president – though not for the whole time – of the ’48 Olympics. It would be extremely important to me. It’s my hometown and my wish, of course.”