The host city of the 2018 Winter Olympics is set to be named

 

                                                                               Katarina Witt is the head of the Munich 2018 bid

The three cities competing to host the Winter Olympics in 2018 will find out on Wednesday which of them has been awarded the Games.

The French city of Annecy, Munich in Germany and South Korea's Pyeongchang were the only applicants.

Pyeongchang, bidding for the third consecutive time after missing out in 2010 and 2014, is the favourite, with Annecy the outsider.

The winning city will be announced in Durban, South Africa.

Former British Olympic Association (BOA) chief executive Simon Clegg told BBC Radio 5 live it was no surprise that Pyeongchang should be the front runner.

"Any bid by a Korean city is always a strong bid because the Korean government get fully behind their bid," he said. "They see it as a vehicle for achieving many things, not just sporting prowess, but also making sure the world is focused on South Korea and perhaps less on some of the challenges that they face across the border."

Munich is considered to be Pyeongchang's main challenger and is hoping to become the first city to host both a summer and winter Games - it staged the summer Olympics in 1972.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will vote by secret ballot, with the winner expected to be announced by its president, Jacques Rogge, at around 1600 BST.

With seven absentees, 95 IOC members will be eligible to vote in the first round. A majority is required for victory, meaning 48 votes would be enough to win.

If no majority is reached in the opening round, the city with the least support will be eliminated and the two remaining cities will go to a second and final ballot.

When the initial applications were submitted, the IOC approved Munich and Pyeongchang without any reservations, but said Annecy should review its sports venue plans.

The finalists had to submit their detailed bid proposals to the IOC by 11 January 2011.

An IOC evaluation commission visited each city and issued a report assessing the bids a month before the final vote.

It is the fewest number of bids to stage a Winter Olympics since 1981, when three finalists competed for the 1988 Olympics, which were awarded to the Canadian city of Calgary.

There were seven bids for the 1992 Games, four for 1994, six for 1998, nine for 2002 (cut to four finalists), six for 2006, eight for 2010 (reduced to four finalists) and seven for 2014 (decreased to three finalists).

Pyeongchang, located in the Alpensia mountains east of Seoul, narrowly lost out to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics and to Sochi, Russia, for the 2014 Games.

Korean bid chiefs say they have learned from those defeats and claim their Games would be the most compact in history.

The Bavarian bid proposes holding ice events in Munich and snow competitions in the mountain resorts of Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Koenigssee.

The Savoy lakeside resort of Annecy is making its first Olympic bid, although France has staged the Winter Games three times - Chamonix in 1924, Grenoble in 1968 and Albertville in 1992.

The bid proposes using eight ski resorts around Mont Blanc, including Chamonix, Megeve and Morzine.