Image: Rubber Bond
Don’t get me wrong.
I enjoy, nay, am obsessed, with the Olympics. Winter or summer games, the break provided by a fortnight of watching sport is one of my pleasures.
Curling? I’ll watch it. Sailing? That, too.
Yet, like many Olympic fans and skeptics alike, I question whether the expense incurred by Olympic host cities and nations is worth it.
I worry about the waste of resources, the impact on the local population and the sustainability of single-use facilities.
Might it be better to have one or two permanent Olympic sites, with up-to-date features and a higher return on investment?
Is the Olympic legacy worth it? I’d love to hear your opinions.
Here’s one opinion, as shown in an infographic. Graffiti, disrepair, looters, oh my.
Yesterday’s Forgotten Future by Rubber Bond.
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The short answer: No. Hosting the Olympics (or any other large event) rarely provide a positive return to the community doing the spending. It also, as the infographic reminds us, leaves the communities with lots of costs for upkeep — costs it is often unwilling or unable to incur.
http://fortune.com/2016/08/10/olympics-financial-disasters/
I’d suggest the summer games be hosted permanently in Greece, and the winter games ought to be in Germany, Switzerland, or Austria. And then the IOC ought to assess each national team a certain amount (whatever that is) to chip in toward the initial costs.
I like your nod to history with the summer games being permanently in Greece. And cost-sharing is a great idea. Wherever the winter games were to land, I think there should be excellent transportation infrastructure in place, along with sufficient snow. The smaller the carbon footprint, the better. What do you think?
On challenge in minimizing the carbon footprint is that the events seem to be scattered all over the place. I haven’t studied the matter, but I vaguely remember that you’d have downhill events in one place, the ice arena hundreds of miles away, and the luge track 60 miles away in another direction.
And moving a lot of people around in a mountainous area is usually a challenge, isn’t it?
As for the total environmental impact of the games, I’m not sure it compares with the sum of all the world cup events for each sport. Maybe it’s the same, though — through increasing public interest in watching the events — perhaps increases the amount of human demands on the natural environment.
Well we can never get rid of human demands on the natural environment, but I do think choosing colder climate venues for the winter games would help a lot. Making tons of snow, storing and moving snow when it’s insufficient, those things seem nonsensical to me. And yes, it does seem to take a herculean logistical effort to move folks between venues. I realize local authorities want to share the love with neighboring communities (probably as a means of building local support and contribution of local funds), but concentrating everything in a smaller area would be helpful, even if it resulted in fewer tourists. The stands largely appear empty anyway. Such a puzzle!
Given the concerns you’ve raised, which Winter Olympic games were the best?