Should The Games Have Been In Rio?
August 16, 2016 at 4:17 p.m.
By Mark [email protected]
The biggest mistake was putting the 2004 Games in Athens; a place that couldn’t afford the cost, even though it was the sentimental choice for that particular games.
How in the world can the Olympics not be competed in front of sellout crowds? Of the events I’ve watched, (and I’ve not been glued to the Olympics as much as someone might think) only the opening ceremony was sold out. I’ll concede I’ve not watched Brazil compete in a heck of a lot, but even then there were, as the baseball announcers of yesteryear would say, “plenty of good seats available.”
Rio has always attracted tourists from around the world, by reputation anyway. It’s my thought that the world-travelling sports fan; those with the means to go pretty much where they want, when they want, was just there two years ago for the World Cup.
And they didn’t necessarily like what they saw.
A full month before the Games began, police and other first responders were at the airport with signs reading “Welcome to Hell.” Those people hadn’t been paid in weeks, and it’s hard to imagine security being “beefed up” when the people already in place can’t make a deposit.
Then the news over the weekend that American swimmers, most notably Ryan Lochte, were mugged. Before that, a bus filled with journalists was attacked; there’s some who say it was stoned, others who reported shots fired. And these are far from the only two incidents.
In comparison to the tragedy of the 1972 Munich games, even collectively these are small potatoes-types of incidents. But it seems security is lacking at these Games, and that’s a sad, pathetic thing.
It could be that I’m biased; this year the Olympics could have been in Chicago. When that bid was made, my wife and I talked about finding something that we could go to with the kids to say “we’ve been to the Olympics.” Short of winning a lottery jackpot, the stuff we see on TV was probably going to be out of reach. But we’d have happily gone to see badminton, shooting sports, archery, those sorts of things.
Imagine the people-watching opportunity the Olympics would have been.
But, it’s not like the Windy City has a stellar reputation for safety. And as it so happens, imagine what this Cubs season would have been like had they gone on an extended road trip to accommodate the Olympics. It would have been pretty cool to have the Games in the city the President calls home, whether you agree with his politics or not.
I get why the IOC wants to spread the games around: it’s a one-of-a-kind opportunity for a country to showcase itself as a force, economically and otherwise, on a world stage. There’s nothing quite like the Olympics.
And after seeing what has transpired with these games, it’s easy to imagine the IOC will avoid having the games in a country that has recently hosted the World Cup, unless that country is among the superpowers or known for wealth (i.e. oil) and thus, security.
On a semi-related note: there’s been a story circulating on the internet about the Olympics being a vast waste of money. The three cases it cited were the facilities used in some Games have fallen into disrepair. Specifically, it cited venues from the 2004 Summer games in Athens, the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Games and the 1936 Berlin Summer Games.
I won’t belabor the point about Athens; it couldn’t afford to have the games there in the first place.
In 1984 Sarajevo was in Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists. Today the city is the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina; the remainder of the former Yugoslavia is now Serbia after a long, bloody civil war.
During times of war, is maintenance of Olympic venues a priority?
Besides the fact that venues from 1936 are 80 years old, Germans should get a pass for not preserving anything that glorifies the Nazi regime in any way. To be honest, I’m mildly surprised that those places haven’t been bulldozed.
It’s interesting that Los Angeles is rumored to be putting together a bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, and the biggest selling point is most of the venues are already in place. I’m curious to see if that bid comes to pass, and if my then-adult kids would care to go to the games with their parents.
Hmmmm...
The biggest mistake was putting the 2004 Games in Athens; a place that couldn’t afford the cost, even though it was the sentimental choice for that particular games.
How in the world can the Olympics not be competed in front of sellout crowds? Of the events I’ve watched, (and I’ve not been glued to the Olympics as much as someone might think) only the opening ceremony was sold out. I’ll concede I’ve not watched Brazil compete in a heck of a lot, but even then there were, as the baseball announcers of yesteryear would say, “plenty of good seats available.”
Rio has always attracted tourists from around the world, by reputation anyway. It’s my thought that the world-travelling sports fan; those with the means to go pretty much where they want, when they want, was just there two years ago for the World Cup.
And they didn’t necessarily like what they saw.
A full month before the Games began, police and other first responders were at the airport with signs reading “Welcome to Hell.” Those people hadn’t been paid in weeks, and it’s hard to imagine security being “beefed up” when the people already in place can’t make a deposit.
Then the news over the weekend that American swimmers, most notably Ryan Lochte, were mugged. Before that, a bus filled with journalists was attacked; there’s some who say it was stoned, others who reported shots fired. And these are far from the only two incidents.
In comparison to the tragedy of the 1972 Munich games, even collectively these are small potatoes-types of incidents. But it seems security is lacking at these Games, and that’s a sad, pathetic thing.
It could be that I’m biased; this year the Olympics could have been in Chicago. When that bid was made, my wife and I talked about finding something that we could go to with the kids to say “we’ve been to the Olympics.” Short of winning a lottery jackpot, the stuff we see on TV was probably going to be out of reach. But we’d have happily gone to see badminton, shooting sports, archery, those sorts of things.
Imagine the people-watching opportunity the Olympics would have been.
But, it’s not like the Windy City has a stellar reputation for safety. And as it so happens, imagine what this Cubs season would have been like had they gone on an extended road trip to accommodate the Olympics. It would have been pretty cool to have the Games in the city the President calls home, whether you agree with his politics or not.
I get why the IOC wants to spread the games around: it’s a one-of-a-kind opportunity for a country to showcase itself as a force, economically and otherwise, on a world stage. There’s nothing quite like the Olympics.
And after seeing what has transpired with these games, it’s easy to imagine the IOC will avoid having the games in a country that has recently hosted the World Cup, unless that country is among the superpowers or known for wealth (i.e. oil) and thus, security.
On a semi-related note: there’s been a story circulating on the internet about the Olympics being a vast waste of money. The three cases it cited were the facilities used in some Games have fallen into disrepair. Specifically, it cited venues from the 2004 Summer games in Athens, the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Games and the 1936 Berlin Summer Games.
I won’t belabor the point about Athens; it couldn’t afford to have the games there in the first place.
In 1984 Sarajevo was in Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists. Today the city is the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina; the remainder of the former Yugoslavia is now Serbia after a long, bloody civil war.
During times of war, is maintenance of Olympic venues a priority?
Besides the fact that venues from 1936 are 80 years old, Germans should get a pass for not preserving anything that glorifies the Nazi regime in any way. To be honest, I’m mildly surprised that those places haven’t been bulldozed.
It’s interesting that Los Angeles is rumored to be putting together a bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, and the biggest selling point is most of the venues are already in place. I’m curious to see if that bid comes to pass, and if my then-adult kids would care to go to the games with their parents.
Hmmmm...
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