I went to Hiroshima seven years ago.

It was during the 2002 World Cup and the visit acted as a supreme reality check.

After three weeks wallowing in the best escapism on the planet, the sight of the Japanese city’s ruined dome, its skeleton exposed like a barbed wire climbing-frame, restored my sense of perspective with a thud.

Two days earlier in the bowels of a football stadium maybe 500 kilometresm away in Shizuoka, I had looked on as a distraught David Seaman and his England team-mates reacted to being knocked out of the competition by an outrageous Ronaldinho free-kick.

At the time, their despair seemed only natural. Viewed from the spot where the most terrible and important single event of the 20th century had taken place, it was exposed as utterly preposterous.

How could a grown man be reduced to tears by anything as small as a World Cup?

These memories came rushing back to me this week when I read that Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the other Japanese city attacked with an atomic bomb by the United States in World War Two, were considering a joint bid to host the 2020 Olympic Games.

Conceptually, this is a stunning and wonderful idea.

We all take winning in sport much too seriously these days.

Pierre de Coubertin’s assertion that, "The important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part", has taken on the timbre of a quaint cliché, more honoured, by far, in the breach than the observance.

Staging the Games on land incinerated by bombs that harnessed what President Harry S. Truman described as "the basic power of the universe" would restore a much-needed dose of humility to proceedings.

No other city could give a more compelling answer to the question, 'Why should the Olympics be staged here?'

It is on turning one’s mind to the other fundamental question – 'How are the Olympics to be staged here?' – that the practical difficulties that would probably undermine a Hiroshima/Nagasaki bid become evident.

These are principally, 1. They are not big cities – the population of Hiroshima is just over one million; that of Nagasaki not quite half of that and 2. They are not that close – a map I consulted suggests an intervening distance of about 300 kilometres, as the crane flies.

It could be that the symbolism inherent in staging the Games in these two cities would be deemed so potent as to override the usual practical concerns, but I doubt it.

As the last two contests have shown, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is spoilt for choice at the moment when it comes to selecting its Summer Games hosts.

Having said that, a strong Asian bid should stand a good chance of walking off with the prize in 2020.

For example, Tokyo – which garnered a lot of goodwill in a losing cause with its recent 2016 bid – could be formidable if it tries again.

It seems to me that there could be a way of granting Hiroshima and Nagasaki at least a piece of their Olympic dream while investing a new Tokyo bid with a potentially decisive extra dimension.

Why not advocate making Hiroshima and Nagasaki the heart of the 2020 Olympic football tournament?

This is generally spread around the host country in any case and my hunch is that FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who is also an IOC member, would welcome the idea.

Other places associated with the war – Okinawa? – could perhaps also stage matches.

● As one Olympic race finishes, another begins.

We now know that there will be just three bidders – Annecy of France, Munich of Germany and (for the third time in a row) Pyeongchang of South Korea – in the contest to stage the 2018 Winter Olympics.

For the 2014 Games, won eventually by Sochi, there were seven applicant-cities.

So my question is: Should the IOC be concerned?

I have to say my answer would be, Yes, kind of.

There is no crisis here: economic times are hard, so it was always likely that cities which might in other circumstances have bid would think very hard before entering this prestige contest.

And these are solid runners; I would be surprised if any of them fails to make it to the Candidate-city phase, making it a three-horse race in the final stages – the same as last time.

It is only fair to point out too that Sochi 2014 is bucking the economic trend as far as corporate sponsorship is concerned.

As I speculated in February, it could be that Sochi will be the first Winter Olympics to raise more than $1 billion (£613 million) in domestic sponsorship.

But Sochi, I suspect, will prove a bit of a one-off.

Not only is Russia a part of the world where the Winter Olympics matters more than just about anywhere else, but Vladimir Putin, a politician who wields very considerable power, has made the Sochi Games a personal project.

Both factors, I would think, must be helping Games organisers to ride out these tough economic times in good shape.

Vancouver 2010, for whom the global financial crisis could hardly have come at a worse time, have appeared less serene, with the IOC recently agreeing to assist Games organisers if, as feared, they incur a deficit caused by the recession’s impact on corporate sponsorship.

The Canadian city’s problems are largely a timing issue.

As Andrew Benett, global chief strategy officer for Euro RSCG Worldwide, the advertising agency, recently told me: "If the Vancouver Winter Olympics had been in February 2011, not 2010, they would be suffering less."

However, as Benett went on to say, "Even so, the Winter Olympics have never done as well as the Summer Olympics."

In short, I am starting to wonder whether the time has not come for the Movement to start thinking in earnest about how to beef the Winter Olympics up.

The fundamental problem, of course, is that – unlike their summer counterpart – large chunks of the world, which rarely experience snow and ice, are not really interested in them.

This has business repercussions for the IOC since, while the sums raked in by the Winter Games are far from negligible, its real copper-bottomed money-spinner – the Summer Olympics – comes along only once every four years.

(In this respect, the IOC is a bit like FIFA, world football’s governing body, whose flagship competition – the World Cup – is also on a four-year cycle.)

I have long thought that the IOC would benefit by making the Summer and Winter Olympics more equal in scale.

It seems to me, furthermore, that there is a relatively simple – if no doubt politicially delicate – way of achieving this.

Why not switch some of the indoor sports currently in the Summer Olympic programme to the Winter Games?

I can’t really see why disciplines such as track cycling and gymnastics shouldn’t make such a move, in the process broadening the appeal of an event that can seem like the Movement’s poor cousin.

And how about volleyball – a sport popular in many snow-less nations that would still have, in beach volleyball, a format ideally suited to the Summer Games?

The financial milestones being established by Sochi will probably mean that Olympic bosses can get by without making significant changes to the shape of the Winter Games if they want to. Whether this would be the wisest stance to adopt is another matter.

David Owen is a specialist sports journalist who worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering last year's Beijing Olympics. An archive of Owen’s material may be found by Twitter users at www.twitter.com/dodo938