Plenty of athletes have already made their way into the "closed loop" for the upcoming Games, while others are in the final stages of their preparations before heading to the Chinese capital.

But, had a couple of International Olympic Committee (IOC) members ticked the other box in the knife-edge contest at the IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur nearly seven years ago, they might be departing for a very different destination.

Almaty ran Beijing closer than many had expected. It lost by four votes in the two-horse race, but 40 of the IOC electorate preferred the event take place in the Kazakh city rather than the Chinese capital.

The outcome followed issues with the "integrity" of the IOC’s electronic voting system in the first round, which forced a re-vote. It is believed Beijing won that ballot anyway, but the exact breakdown has never been revealed.

Had Almaty’s bid been successful, we would be about to see American Alpine skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin compete at Almatau Mountain and Chinese freestyle star Eileen Gu take to the slopes at Ak Bulak Resort.

Bigwigs at the IOC would be settling into their plush five-star hotel in the city, offering a view of the vast majority of the planned venues for the Games.

IOC President Thomas Bach would no doubt be constantly speaking of the "historic" nature of the first Olympic Games to be held in Kazakhstan - a country which, at the time of the vote, had only been independent for 24 years.

So what would an Olympics in Almaty have looked like?

Officials involved in the bid claimed a Winter Olympics in the former Kazakh capital would be the most compact for three decades, while they planned to have all venues no further than 30 kilometres from the Athletes' Village - a far cry from Beijing, which is 190 kilometres south of the mountain town of Zhangjiakou, the location for events including Alpine skiing.

Facilities for sports such as ice hockey and curling - two favourite sports of the casual Winter Olympic fan - were all proposed to be in the city centre.

Almaty itself was given praise by IOC members and visiting journalists alike following an Evaluation Commission visit a few months prior to the vote.

My former colleague Nick Butler described Almaty as "a picturesque city in the shadow of mountains" which possesses a "pleasing blend of old and historical facilities with state-of-the-art new ones".

The Almaty 2022 slogan was "keeping it real", which many implied to be a dig at the perceived lack of snow in Beijing. 

"Almaty 2022 had a great bid and a great message, we just started too late," veteran Olympic bidding consultant Terrence Burns said.

"It would have been a spectacular venue. 

"The greatest secret of every Olympic Games, the thing that truly sets them apart from others, are the people. 

"And the people of Kazakhstan were among the nicest and warmest of the 13 Olympic bids I worked on.

"That’s why I created the tagline, 'Keeping it Real' for that bid: nothing was artificial or fake about that bid or the place or the people. Even the snow was real."

Bid officials also attempted to talk up the city's winter sport heritage, and the need not to construct expensive facilities that could eventually become white elephants, as it was due to stage the Winter Universiade two years after the IOC vote.

Only three venues - the main Olympic Village, the Sunkar Sliding Centre and the Almaty Olympic Arena - were to be built entirely from scratch. Eight of the 14 venues were already there, while the other three were being constructed for the 2017 Universiade.

There were weaknesses in the bid - including human rights concerns, initial reluctance from the Government to support it, Kazakhstan’s economic problems and appointing a convicted drugs cheat as an ambassador - but the IOC members who plumped for Beijing will probably see the result as a missed opportunity for the Olympic Movement.

It had been thought that Almaty’s bid and the narrow margin of defeat that it suffered would lead to further Olympic bids, but these have not materialised.

"Almaty hosting the Games would have been an ideal opportunity to tell a story about a country few know much about," former IOC marketing director Michael Payne said.

"The Kazakh Government would have had a chance similar to Seoul in 1988. The Olympics in South Korea had a huge effect on the country, and not just politically.”

In its final presentation to the IOC Session in 2015, Almaty urged the members to vote for innovation rather than a choice which made them "sleep easiest at night".

There would have no doubt been sleepless nights among the IOC leadership had Almaty been set to stage the Games in the current climate after the country was plunged into chaos and crisis at the start of the year.

In a rare occurrence for an autocratic nation such as Kazakhstan, there were widespread protests following a decision to double fuel prices. What followed was violent scenes leading to the deaths of more than 160 people and the detention of as many as 4,000.

It also led to the arrest of Kazakhstan Prime Minister Karim Massimov, the chair of Almaty’s 2022 Winter Olympic bid and who had made a plea to the IOC membership to pick the city over Beijing at the 2015 Session.

Almaty, Kazakhstan’s capital until 1997, was placed under emergency measures in response to the crisis, which has since subsided.

Of course, this is all hypothetical, and it is possible the protests, disruption and violence would not have occurred if the Olympic circus had been about to head to town.

"The key question is whether political events would have unfolded way they did if they had had the Games," Payne said.

Those who had hoped Almaty won the 2022 race will be left thinking what might have been over the coming weeks as Beijing - and China - prepares to take centre stage.