Post-Olympic Abandonment | Hacker News Reader

Post-Olympic Abandonment

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210 pointspmcpinto154 comments

Would it negatively impact the Olympics if we stopped rotating them at this point? I mean, besides the IOC missing out on the opportunity compete with FIFA on graft?

Let's just locate the Olympics in a permanent facility -- Greece, if they'll have them, for tradition. I think between "not rebuilding everything from scratch every four years" and the expectation of recurring events, the single host country could both run the games more efficiently and it would benefit the economy a lot more -- sure, it'd only benefit the one host country, but it would be going from "not benefiting a lot host countries (who go over-budget and never make back the money on tourism)" to "actually benefiting one host country".

Let the IOC auction off the opening show if you want to give one country a chance to show off every four years.

All of these comments are missing the entire point of the olympics. It's like watching engineers trying to solve business problems in entrenched markets. Hint: it's not a logistical/engineering problem.

The olympics as they exist today are there to enrich the members of the IOC. That's it. How are any of all of these brilliant suggestions going to enrich the IOC members?

I have no idea on how solve this, besides first destroying the olympic brand that they are all hiding beneath.

That's overly simplistic. Other influences include the geo-political power play and prestige, the marketing opportunities for global brands, athlete and sport fans wishes, etc.

You are just talking about the side-benefits that cause nations and companies to feed money into a corrupt system.

> The olympics as they exist today are there to enrich the members of the IOC.

There is no [citation needed] big enough for this claim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:You_don't_need_to_ci... :)

I honestly don't understand what you are trying to say.

S/he's saying you need to have strong evidence for such a strong claim.

The "strong claim" that the IOC is corrupt?

Really? Have you been following IOC news for the past two decades? Everyone knows they're corrupt, but they do own the Olympic brand. The brand is doing great, but the organization that runs it is rotten to the core.

If you really do need a URL, feel free to start here: http://google.com/search?q=olympic+corruption

How do we fix this? I really can't think of a way to do it besides abandoning the term "olympic".

Strong claim that the parties necessary to hold the Olympics, namely the participating nations, chiefly care about enriching the IOC. If the countries and companies involved cared enough about it, or the public did, the brand could be bought or seized by decree and the Olympic Games modified. It is a very old term and a very old concept, so is not like it is that defensible as a trademark. Besides, at the scale of international institutions, trademarks are not particularly powerful. If the US, China, the EU and Russia wanted to change how the Olympics work, change it would.

> If the US, China, the EU and Russia wanted to change how the Olympics work, change it would.

Yeah, that's so likely to happen!

US/China/EU/Russia caring so deeply about the health of the olympics that they collectively strike a deal to negate trademark agreements for the olympics, and together make something fair and enabled for a long life.

Really? Are you at all following global politics? These power houses can't really agree on anything besides ISIS being evil. (And that's a historic breakthrough!)

They agree when their interests agree, and they have plenty of treaties and rules between them when it comes to this sort of minutia. The question is, is any of them better served by a rotating Olympics than a fixed one? If the answer is yes. Say, because it gives them a chance to gain soft power via a PR demonstration of hosting the Olympics, then it will clearly not change. But my point is not that it will change, my point is that what the IOC wants doesn't decide that, what the governments involved want does.

One possible way to explain the current situation is that there is a big incentive for both the EU and, in a lesser degree, the US, to have the Olympics fixed in Greece, a country inside the western system of alliances. Conversely, there is a big incentive for China and Russia to be able to compete for hosting the Olympics themselves or have them hosted in states that are more closely aligned with them, even with the economic cost involved. Smaller countries have incentives to both host or avoid hosting the Olympics. But none of this, none, depends on petty corruption from the IOC. This is not an engineering problem, but it is also not a business problem. As you pointed out just now, it is a geopolitics problem.

(Sorry, I'm getting tired; it's well past my bed time here. Only replying to one of your points.)

> There is a big incentive for both the EU and, in a lesser degree, the US, to have the Olympics fixed in Greece,

I think you have misunderstood the current dynamics in the EU. There would be a very, very, very big resistance towards giving Greece a gift like that, after their giant national financial fraud towards the rest of the EU during the past decade.

Well then lets do the Summer Olympics in Greece, and the Winter Olympics in St. Petersburg.

number of search results for "q=X+corruption" where X =

- New York: 68M

- Washington: 55.5M

- Trump: 54.3M

- Russia: 39M

- Chicago: 32.6M

- Football: 22.4M

- Putin: 10.5M

- Soccer: 9.0M

- Olympic: 1.9M

- NFL: 0.73M

- MLB: 0.58M

- FIFA: 0.63M

- Mafia: 0.58M

- Scientology: 0.41M

- Berlusconi: 0.41M

Let's say that I have some direct experience, both with working within the Olympics games and with Greece. I don't honestly want that cesspool anywhere near Greece, the level of corruption and incompetence I witnessed by the olympic organisations and committees is staggering. The best thing you could do at this point is to stop the games and distribute the funds to healthier or new organisations.

Well, they would fit right in, but you're right, we're trying to have less corruption. I wonder if we can force the IOC to rename the games to something else, maybe they can buy a private island somewhere and host them there in isolation, for whomever wants to attend.

Build stadiums on a couple of old oil tankers and accompanying cruise ships?

Is there any country that matters that doesn't have easy water access? Russia?

Also same deal for Winter Olympics since there's a lot of water up there?

I won't argue that they would fit right in with any government Greece has had since Kapodistrias. However there are a lot of good people in Greece right now trying to turn the situation around, the Olympic games of the past made things even harder for them, I would hate to see it land on their lap again... They seems to bring the worst out in people.

It's possible that, even though it'd be nice for historicity / tradition, the Games just aren't a good fit for Greece.

But one of the things that turning the Games from a maybe-just-once event for a city/country to a recurring relationship does, is that it changes the nature of the profiteering.

A one-time-only event encourages profiteers to cut as deeply as they can can and really screw their customers -- no repeat sales are possible.

A recurring event still presents a large profit opportunity, but the recurrence encourages more cooperative profiteering. Contractors who don't come through or who overcharge beyond the pale don't get the repeat business.

(Of course, this doesn't always happen, and long-term graft is definitely a thing, but at least there's a possibility things might be different with a permanent venue.)

Even for tradition, the games in antiquity were much different from today's games. They used to be about the sport, whereas today they're about money (which is hard not to do when they're this popular, granted).

Who organised the original games and provided the infrastructure for them and how much were they paid vs whipped?

Original games were organised by the city states and were primarily a means of showing off their best potential soldiers, though it served several other reasons as well, like most things it got complex. Fun fact, even though there was meant to be an Olympic truce, it was a much favored time to backstab your neighbour since lots of cities didn't expect it and as usual the victors wrote the books.

You could do that or you could just keep it at the same facility for, say, 20 years and THEN move it. So a country could get a 20-year economic boost (hopefully, at least long-term) and at least re-use the facilities a few times

I think any boom would be short lived. The travel novelty would grow thin. The repeated use of the same facilities would also impact the sports.

More fundimental is the question of any boom. London didnt see much, with some shops downtown instead seeing marked reductions. Vancouver barely broke even. China didnt do it for the money. And the less said about Sochi's costs the better.

> London didnt see much

Part of it is on the verge of being converted into a cement factory (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/11/olympic-park...)

Honestly believe a world without the Olympic games is a better world, if London can't find much use for them and Rio is already letting them fall into disrepair. What on earth is the point in this.

Reading your link, it seems that the cement factory land was always zoned industrial, and was intended to be used for industrial purposes after the Olympics.

The Olympic park in London is bringing lots of new facilities - an innovation park, a university campus, a theatre etc and thousands of new homes.

London is an exception to olympic abandonment to my mind - it's doing a lot of the success of east London on what was previously polluted industrial land.

> The repeated use of the same facilities would also impact the sports.

Doesn't seem to matter to the Cubs or Red Sox who both play in parks over 100 years old and are two of the most popular baseball teams. When you don't have to build them new every Olympics the facilities themselves could be much higher quality and actually be maintained.

Not age. Many events want slightly different venues each year. Marathons, sliding sports, even sailing. Adapting to the new venue is part of the sport.

Marathons and sailing don't require purpose-built facilities so it's easy to maintain the variety there, just draw the route somewhere else. Sliding sports might present more of a challenge but a few corners can be changed to add variety without having to build an entirely new facility.

Without changing venues, other facilities will immediately attempt to duplicate the official Olympic venue in minute detail.

> The repeated use of the same facilities would also impact the sports.

If you where going to host 5 games then you could build a lot larger and more enduring facilities which would still be fairly new 20 years out. Importantly, you could also make some improvements after the first game when something did not work well. Worst case, I doubt maintaining unused buildings for 4 years then doing some renovation costs nearly as much as building them from scratch.

So, I don't see how using the same buildings 5 times would be a major issue. Further, a 20 year stretch in a single city would bring a stronger connection to the games as visiting the future site of the games is far more interesting than seeing where there was once greatness.

So Greece, for example, becomes responsible for the maintenance and updates to the facilities, which they obviously can't afford now? Having a single host country works only if all the participating countries chip in annually according to their GNP or some other measure of their financial worth. How, then, is that enforced? You can always exclude those countries who are in arrears but that only harms the athletes. For example, losing the Kenyan runners from the Olympics because their country won't or can't pay would be a travesty and cheapen the events. Either that or the world class athletes would relocate to a wealthy nation, sending yet another blow to their home country.

I'd be interested to know how the financial benefit of hosting the Olympics (tourism, etc) would compare to upkeep of permanent facilities. In theory the crowds coming to town every 4 years would be a big economic boost, though perhaps not enough of one.

It depends a lot on whether the facilities can be put to good use and how big the tourism effect is in the interim.

An interesting case to study here is the town of Oberammergau in Bavaria. Several centuries ago, the people there vowed to put on a passion play every ten years if they were spared by the plague. They stuck to that vow and have been doing it ever since, putting on an absolutely top quality production each time. The next one will be in 2020, and tickets tend to be sold out years in advance.

Even though the town rakes in a lot of money during passion play years, they tended to be in financial dire straits all the time because of the enormous fluctuation, and (comparatively recently) started to use the rather large facilities that were built for the play also for other cultural events in off-years.

10 years gives you a bigger gap than the 4 years of the Olympics, but I'd expect similar issues to arise.

BTW, the story of Oberammergau really is absolutely fascinating. One of the rules is that only people born there can participate in the play, with the consequence being that the town systematically produces a massive amount of talented musicians, actors, and other artists, considering how small it is. Really makes you think: if there's so much potential there, then how much human potential are we wasting almost everywhere else!

Another fun fact is that one of the first electrified railways in Germany was built specifically to connect Munich to Oberammergau.

I think previous commenters have suggested this but what about splitting the Olympics up into four years of competitions. So 1/4 of the the events are played every year. There would be "premiere" events to draw people in but the less-viewed sports could actually get more attention because there is less competition for viewership.

No, whoever received the billions in TV rights money pays for that. Obviously.

How long will 'TV right' be worth billions?

Well, "streaming and broadcast".

So far the content owner has been super aggressive about policing their intellectual property they paid for the exclusive right to distribute. Of course, geography keeps interfering with the ideal case for consumers. So we all lose as usual.

I'm getting really tired of losing that way, over and over and over with no end in sight. It's so tiring when every conceivable entity has an interest, and it so often conflicts with your own. It's like living your life mobbed by children desperately trying to sell you chiclets or little toys, while others are picking your pockets.

I was quite delighted with the Rio Olympics in terms of accessibility: streaming gave on-demand largely/completely commercial-free to some 6,000 hours of content (live & replay). Only quirk was having to AirPlay it from my iPhone to my Apple TV, and it may have leveraged some rights with AT&T/U-verse for otherwise free viewing.

No idea, but after the initial expense you can pretty much fund ongoing maintenance from the leftovers you have wisely invested instead of embezzled.

> Either that or the world class athletes would relocate to a wealthy nation, sending yet another blow to their home country.

This already happens but for other reasons. Some athletes will move to a country that underperforms in the Olympics for their sport so they can qualify easier.

Heh heh. I used to work with a guy who came from a country which doesn't (or didn't at the time, anyway) send a team to every sport in the winter Olympics. As a lark the office was pushing to get him into the games in one of the skiing events (he didn't ski).

Sadly, the country in question wanted to see some evidence he could ski well, since they didn't want to be embarrassed.

Some cities did well with the Olympics because they had viable uses for the larger facilities in place before the game construction started. Atlanta spun off the stadium and dorms without issue.

These events while bid on under the guise of improving the local economy or bringing pride to a host city and nation have for the longest time merely existed as puff pieces for the politicians involved.

Green obviously cannot handle both Winter and Summer but there are countries who could and even a round robin system could be employed. Perhaps vetting should require demonstrating how a major percentage of facilities will be used post Olympics to better the host city and nation?

IOC isn't the only issue, FIFA is just as bad if not worse and that is from abuse issues mostly

After the Vancouver Olympics, I half-jokingly proposed a Distributed Olympics:

https://invisiblesummer.net/2012/08/12/towards-a-distributed...

Summary:

1. The host city gets it for 40 years, to amortize the cost of building the facilities and to improve through experience.

2. Distribute groups of sports (skiing events, swimming events, etc) to different host cities, to reduce the impact on each city and to foster a sense of international cooperation.

3. Stagger the events throughout the year, to avoid scheduling conflicts and viewer burnout.

I love the idea of hosting in Greece with a "co-host" country that kicks in a bunch of money and gets to do the opening ceremony.

All the athletes go to the opening ceremony, so it would be hard to do logistically, not to mention the jet lag.

There's a Greek national park just southwest of Thessaloniki, which is just across the bay from the international airport. It seems like there ought to be somewhere between Thessaloniki and Litochoro that can support multiple permanent athletics venues--with the obvious exception of the marathon, which would have to start in Marathon and end in Athens.

And if Sochi can do a Winter Games, so can a mountain resort in the Olympus Range.

The IOC can definitely invest in their own danged facilities, instead of bankrupting local governments every 2 years and then skipping town for a generation.

A single permanent site will never happen. What I think would be better would be like The Open golf, they have half a dozen locations that are rotated between in a semi-random fashion. Other locations can be added to the rota if they prove themselves. And the locations should be country based rather than city to spread the load.

But I think due to the corruption of the delegates that will never happen either, they get too many kickbacks from being part of the bidding process.

> Let's just locate the Olympics in a permanent facility

No.

The Olympics is a political event, it needs to continue rotating location to assume its role.

It is not about sports, it is not about efficiency.

The world is falling into 3 distinct time zones, Americas, Europe/Africa, East Asia. At the very least we would need 3 permanent hosts in those 3 regions to rotate between every 4 years.

Olympics was about bringing the world together.

I would say it fails today, because now most troubled countries don't care about sport. But anyway, permanent location for Olympics will defeat that idea for good and will turn Olympics into a completely worthless consumerism fest.

Maybe just make them cheaper?

It seems to me that the countries that maintained their Olympic facilities (England, Australia, US, Norway, Germany, China) all tilt to the wealthier end of the spectrum. Conversely, the poorer ones, Brazil and Greece, really couldn't afford hosting the games in the first place, let alone maintaining the venues afterwards. These days, its the wealthier countries that turn down the offer to host because of the costs while the poorer ones, often led by corrupt and bankrupt governments, are awarded the "honor" resulting into even deeper poverty for their people and short-term glorification of the government.

Judging by the bidding history from recent years, wealthier countries are still very keen to host. Spain, Japan, Germany, the US and other rich countries have all made repeated bids to host.

I think the IOC like to give the games to poorer countries like Brazil and China because it helps to spread the Olympic "brand", and encourage interest and participation in more parts of the world. Or maybe its just because poorer countries provide more opportunities for graft.

If the IOC are serious about fixing this issue, they should:

1. Require all bidding cities to have the necessary non-sporting infrastructure in place before making an official bid.

E.g. You can propose to build stadiums and athlete villages as part of the bidding process, but not extend metros, clear slums, build highways, etc.

There could be a rolling programme whereby the IOC evaluates potential host cities and determines whether they meet the eligibility requirements.

2. Require and enforce strict cost controls on each bid, relative to the potential host country's finances. E.g. the bid cannot exceed a particular % of the country's GDP, or involve incurring national debt beyond a certain level.

3. Conduct regular reviews into the progress and cost of preparations for hosting. In the event of safety problems or significant cost overruns, the venue should be switched. Every Games should have a contingency plan for hosting a cut-down version in a country with existing infrastructure, if the actual host proves unable to meet the promises and estimates made during the bidding process.

Even in the US, cities are catching on that hosting an Olympics is likely a money-losing event, and they'll be saddled with poorly-built large facilities afterwards (why build well when you can build fast?).

Permanent facilities, perhaps two or four per continent (for winter & summer games, and two have two host countries), would likely be a good answer.

In the US at least, this is offset by the fact that large metropolitan areas have excellent D1 college facilities along with multi-use professional sports stadiums. More importantly, those facilities are already being used and will be used in the future.

As far as I can tell, the biggest hassle for American cities is traffic. All of the facilities are there, but putting them into use all at once with tens of thousands of foreign tourists would be an utter nightmare, especially with American reliance on cars and lack of public transportation options.

Olympic bids often do help encourage public transit development in the US, however - a great recent example here is the extension of the 7-line subway in NYC, which was originally planned as part of the city's bid for the 2012 Olympics. After the city lost the bid, it was decided to go ahead and build the line anyways as part of another redevelopment project.

Or they could do what Romney did and have most of the Olympic facilities out in bumfuck nowhere to avoid inconveniencing the city with traffic.

Sounds like the Olympics are the Groupon of sports.

I think Americans have been aware of this for quite a long time. That's why the Lake Placid "Olympic village" was built to be a prison, and we all just pretended it was actually a dormitory for athletes for a few short weeks. After the visitors left, they went back in to finish putting in the bars and fences.

Atlanta never would have submitted a bid if they didn't have businesses already lined up to not only take over the facilities after the event, but to participate in the design to ensure they would be fit for purpose after the visitors left.

US tax-payers would go into open revolt if their city did not have a post-event plan for all the visitor infrastructure that is at least plausibly non-disastrous. We get angry enough as it is when the city uses our taxes to subsidize just one professional sports team--a team that will probably turn around to charge us $50 per 19-inch (48 cm) seat, $10 for each beer, and just suck in league play for the next 10 seasons. As far as I'm concerned, only publicly-owned teams should even be eligible for public support, and the only "major" team in the US that even qualifies is the NFL's Green Bay Packers.

So you're going to have to line up support from a university; Live Nation or some other big concert promoter; a major or minor league sports team or two; perhaps a mall company like Simon Property Group, Westfield Group, or General Growth Properties; and maybe a hotelier like Wyndham, Hyatt, Mariott, Hilton, or Choice. You'll need restaurant franchisees, city planners, and support from the mass transit companies. And then you still have to win the event bid. Even if you do win, a lot of residents will be saying, "Oh, so you'll do actual maintenance and improvements to infrastructure for THEM, who will be here for two months and then leave you with the bill, but you won't do it for US, living here and working and paying taxes for generations? You got some esplainin' to do."

Then there is also the issue that even our most corrupt politicians sometimes balk at bribing foreign officials. Sure, they'll take under-the-table lobbying dollars from domestic corporations and casino-operating tribes all day long, and nobody bats an eye, but you get international borders involved, and suddenly they get worried about possible federal criminal charges.

It appears that only the Lake Placid Olympics lost money in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_the_Olympic_Games

This rings true with me, and I’ll highlight your phrase "corrupt and bankrupt governments.”

I’d bet that the amount of waste and abandonment is in inverse proportion to the democracy score of the host country. The more democratic the country, the more likely they are to either reject the Olympic outright, or manage the investment effectively.

I like to think that Barcelona is a good example of how Olympic Games should impact a city. Growth was controlled and it allowed for regeneration of some shady parts of the city. They didn't build crazy venues and the ones they did build are still in use today 25 years later.

I fully agree with this. Barcelona is one of the best examples as for how the Olympic games can help.

London is a great example, but in London is easy to use the large venues. Barcelona was more challenging and they made well.

> London is a great example

The area was regenerating itself just fine. As someone who lives in it long before the games. The olympics did nothing for the area and it's now partly going to be host to a cement factory, thanks Olympics.

I think a better way to phrase it is "Barcelona is THE example". It's sort of like citing a unicorn when deciding to start a company -- sure, there's upside potential, but it's a whole lot less likely than you think.

There are many articles about abandoned Olympic venues but I've never seen one about successful former Olympic venues. I'd like to see what happened to all the venues in London and Beijing. From my bit of knowledge a lot of the London ones were temporary or have been successfully transitioned.

Atlanta has always felt snubbed by hostility from the IOC, who didn't like the level of private corporate sponsorship used to fund the 1996 Games (nevermind that two decades later, it would be considered modestly quaint today).

However, it was overwhelmingly a successful Games. It created a lasted economic boom, and much of the construction saw continued use or was repurposed afterward.

Today, Atlanta is not really remembered as a "bad" Olympics (because international sports organizatinos like the IOC and FIFA have become more disgustingly capitalistic than we ever were). We are likewise not really remembered as an "success" story either, frankly because most cultural commentary prefers not to think about southern American cities at all outside the context of sweeping generalizations about racism (1). But quietly, it was an example of a success story for the host city.

(1) Yeah, between the '96 Games and this year's Super Bowl, Atlanta sports fans are a pretty bitter crowd. Don't mind us!

Damn straight.

The aquatic center is still in use at GA Tech. And Tech also got a lot of new housing from the Olympic Village, and a nice new student center.

The Olympic Stadium turned into Turner Field, which will now be a stadium for GA State University.

I believe the velodrome is still in use, although not totally sure about that.

Basically, Atlanta planned very well for the post-Olympic legacy. And I think we threw a pretty good Olympics, all in all. Yeah, there was lots of advertising, but because of it, the city didn't go into tremendous debt.

Plus our opening ceremonies were the world debut of wacky waving inflatable arms guy, so that's gotta count for something.

Not to mention Centennial Olympic park is a venue for concerts and events.

Are you going to Shaky Knees? I'm always eager to meet other Atlanta-area engineers, especially if they have similar music tastes.

Apologies, I'm no longer in the Atlanta area. Maybe a local Meetup group perhaps?

The Velodrome is not still in use. There is an outdoor concrete Velodrome in East Point which is heavily used, but it was not an Olympic venue.

I lived for a couple years in housing that was built for the Olympics when I went to GT. It was a nice building.

I also used the aquatic center a couple times to practice kayaking. The coolest part about that pool was you could lower the floor.

I always remember the extra cheering the team of the country of Georgia received during the parade of nations. Some Georgians probably confused the state they are in with the country :-)

https://youtu.be/5Fmk2bS8OWk?t=350

For me the thing that comes to mind most readily is the FBI screwing up and accusing that one poor dude of setting that bomb...

They're supposedly making a film about Richard Jewell starring Jonah Hill. I'm not sure who else is attached. It might be in development hell at this point as the film was first announced several years ago.

It's remembered as a publicity stunt for Coca-Cola, no?

I live next to the olympic park in Stratford and it's pretty great.

- The main stadium is now the local football team's home ground and gets used for concerts as well.

- The olympic pool is an open public pool that anyone can use and looks like it gets a fair amount of use.

- The park itself is a nice open space to be in with lots more flats and shops being built in and around it.

- I have several colleagues who train at the velodrome.

- The athletes housing created thousands of new flats that, are pretty much filled and provided a lot of homes for low income families.

I really like living in Stratford and I don't think I would like it anywhere near as much if the olympics hadn't been there.

Another thing from the article that struck me as good for London is how little it costed compared to the others

> The games set back Sochi $51 billion, London $11.6 billion and Beijing at least $40 billion

That is no small amount, I wonder how much of it was corruption and bad management.

Corruption played a big part, but Sochi had zero infrastructure at the start, it all had to be built from wholecloth, and Beijing need to transform large parts of an existing city to become an international showpiece. London already has incredible infrastructure and is already iconic. It seems that the strategy the London Olympics really used was to simply extend off of the existing systems in place and build up in a cheap area bringing new economic development to that area instead of trying to retrofit the city core.

I believe they purposely "underspent" to not waste money as well, and remember a Chinese friend commenting on how quaint the ceremonies/facilities were. Turns out we should be aiming for London, rather than Beijing.

My friends and I were joking before that Olympics that organizing it was just writing a bunch of letters. To Wimbledon for tennis courts, to FA for Wembeley, etc. Others were probably building from scratch.

The olympic whitewater course at Lee valley is also heavily used and a great facility.

The facilities built for the 2012 Olympic sailing at Weymouth are now home of the National Sailing Academy, and are really well used. In fact I'll be there this weekend with my son along with about 200 other young sailors.

http://www.wpnsa.org.uk/

Even living in a different part of London (Wimbledon), we have the benefits of reusing the equipment. 200 tonnes of sand and the nets from the beach volleyball event were used to make two new beach volleyball courts in Wimbledon Park which are used all the time.

Munich 1972 is relatively successful in it's afterlife: * The Olympic village is rented out, among other things with relatively cheap apartments for students * The Olympic Stadium serves as stadium for FC Bayern and TSV 1860 football (soccer) clubs till 2002 and in summer for open air concerts, in recent years there also had been "fun sport" events and track&field competiotions * The Olympic swimming arena is a busy public bath (one rare chance to swim Olympic distances, most other pools are shorter) * The Olympic hall is used for trade fair events, bicycle races, share holder meetings, concerts, ... and is quite well booked * The canoeing tracks etc. are still in use by clubs * The horse riding arena is still used * The Olympic park is a popular place to hang out * For the bicycle racing area there had been different attempts for a use but they failed * There is a small train station with some tracks which wasn't used since 1972 (or maybe since football (soccer) world championship 1974?) this is supposed to become a cycling path "soon"

Our first stop in Munich was the Olympic Park and we were quite surprised how beautiful and alive the place was.

Entering the swimming hall we immediately wanted to go swimming (but sadly didn’t have the proper gear with us). When you enter the hall you overlook the Olympic pool (there is no wall or glass separating you from the noise and the smell) and that’s very tempting.

If you visit Munich I would recommend visiting the Olympic Park, but do bring you bathing things, just in case.

The Munich olympics were also a great chance for the great graphic designers of the time to show off their system. The event icons lasted for many olympics after.

Plus, the press center tower now serves several companies as offices (with a very nice view from the top onto the Olympic park with the stadium).

Well, I can tell you about the Olympic Park in London. It's used a lot. My kids have their swimming lessons in the olympic pool, and friends kids have diving lessons there. A friend of mine is a coach who runs sessions in the velodrome, BMX and mountain biking tracks. The downsized stadium is now home to West Ham - although fans aren't greatly enamoured with their new stadium which is mixed athletics/football, so the atmosphere is perhaps missing.

During the summer we go there a lot the playgrounds and gardens are gorgeous. Yes, a lot of the temporary venues have gone and there is a vigorous building programme, building both flats and office space.

Salt Lake City still very actively uses almost all venues, even year-round.

My impression was that Sydney also did well with it’s infrastructure after the games. Maybe a result of a sports-hungry public?

The main Olympic park is about 45' outside of the CBD, but it's regularly used. All the football codes (plus more) use the main Olympic Stadium, the surrounding venues are regularly in use too

https://www.olympic.org/news/sydney-s-olympic-venues-provide...

Olympics in Sydney was a money pit. An expensive legacy. I'm not sure if the events followed since then had allowed recovery.

http://theconversation.com/hosting-the-olympics-cash-cow-or-...

http://economicstudents.com/2016/09/road-ruin-economic-case-...

There are actually a lot of academic studies now into the Sydney 2000 Olympics economics. Quite interesting.

I haven't been there in about 10 years (I moved overseas), but one of the things that bugged me about Sydney Olympic Park was that it felt a bit like a barren business park.

Although slightly barren at the time, urban development has completely surrounded the main Olympic area in Sydney. There has been masses of housing developed across the whole area. The green spaces have been maintained and further developed over the years into some of the best parks in Sydney.

Most of the facilities are running events full time and many events that used to to be hosted further to the east of the city are now at Olympic park due to the ease of transport and centrality to the majority of the population.

Personally I think the Olympics are a complete joke and totally corrupted by bribes, commercialism and professional sport. They are long past their use by date and bound to take a hit when corruption becomes more unacceptable in more places, but, the facilities built for Sydney do not belong in an essay like this.

The main Olympic Stadium is now used full time by a local Premier League football team, West Ham. The Olympic pool is now a public swimming pool anyone can go in for £5. Not sure about the other venues, but the whole surrounding area is a new park which is very well used. All in all, a pretty successful legacy.

I'm sorry but this is a question of sustainability, not legacy. They're not even close.

I don't understand the difference in this context. The parent gave a few examples of how the Olympic venues in London have been repurposed for long-term use, so... Are you referring to financial sustainability? The sustainability of the Olympic model? What exactly?

I'm guessing it's a reference to the TV show Twenty Twelve, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYbA2Xsu6VE

He may be referring to the fact that the city rent out the Olympic stadium in London at a very low price to a club who can't fill it and which requires a lot of policing costs. West ham were given the lease do that the stadium wouldn't stand idle.

Perhaps lesser known, but I've heard IOC members mention in interviews on the subject that they thought the 1994 winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway offers one of the best templates for Olympic sustainability. It hosted the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics, too.

One interesting use of a Winter Olympic venue - the sports arena in Hamar, which was used as an ice skating arena in the Lillehammer Winter Olympics is used once a year for The Gathering, a massive LAN party with around 5000 attendees, and it's also used throughout the year for winter sports too, they add and remove the ice as needed.

The venues from the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary are forming the basis of their 2026 bid, so they must still be in good shape.

We hosted the only Olympics in history that I've heard of that turned a profit. I live in Calgary and we still talk about how unique it was compared to other Olympics around the world.

There are definitely some winners post-Olympics, but honestly I don't think they make sense anymore. Seems that Olympics has gone down the wrong path in so many ways with the demands from the IOC requiring bigger and bigger budgets, private organizations taking stricter and stricter control over content even social media that it's just not the same any more when compared to 20+ years ago.

I remember feeling an emotion for the older Olympics that's just not there as much anymore.

The 1984 LA games apparently turned a profit as well.

I remember using lots of the olympic facilities when my family lived in Calgary in the late 90s. The ski jump and bobsled are used for national team training and the public can ride them in a slower and safer manner for a fee.

I think winter olympics are much easier to run sustainably than summer games since there are far fewer sports, and the ones that do exist don't require nearly the same level of specialized venues. Bobsled and ski jump are pretty unique, but other than that everything needed for winter games is highly reusable. Most of the venues are not even that seasonal with the right planning.

Calgary is in an excellent position to host winter games. The venues that have been maintained and used for nearly 30 years and the city has excellent light rail transit to move between venues. Calgary is used to opening its doors to millions of visitors in a short time every year thanks to the Stampede, so the is a huge volunteer core and tons of hotel space. There have been calls for permanent olympic venues to help hold down costs; I think you'd be hard pressed to find a better option than Calgary for the winter games.

Calgarian here. The bobsled is still in use but the large ski jump is now just a zip line course. Ski jumpers improved to the point where they could "out jump" the hill. That would be likely the only large facility that would need to be completely rebuilt if we were to host again.

- The Oval still hosts world cup speed skating. - Canome still has a world class x-country ski facility - Lake Louise still hosts world cup downhill (although it was not used during the 88 games). - We have an NHL sized arena, although there is work to build a new one. - MacMahon stadium could still host an opening ceremonies - Bobsleigh still hosts world cup bobsleigh, skeleton and luge - Calgary Olympic Park holds world cup aerials, moguls, snowboarding half pipe etc

The biggest change from 88 is the size of the crowds. The city would likely need a few more hotel rooms to house athletes and visitors, but that's easy. Our new international terminal just opened so we could handle the increased capacity.

I have been to the athletics venue in Beijing. They have turned it into an ice playground with go-karts, a small ice-skating rink, and several other snow-related games. Inside the stadium itself they had photo's of the medalists and equipment with explanations. It cost a couple of dollars to enter and it was quite busy, so I guess they were able to cover maintenance cost from the entrance fees.

The Beijing Olympic swimming pool is now a water park!

A quarter of it is. The other pools are still being used for a variety of things, including as a big conference center (APEC was held there in 2015).

They're going to re-purpose the whole thing for the winter Olympics. I think it's supposed to become the curling venue.

Lake Placid, NY still uses the Olympic venues. A lot of winter athletes train there.

And, fun fact, the Olympic village is now a prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Correctional_Instituti...

Another fun fact: those dorms were specifically designed for easy conversion into a prison. Apparently the athletes were not super thrilled.

There were articles like that before the Rio games.

The Beijing facilities, which were in a city that could use big sports facilities, are now mostly abandoned.[1] The big "birds nest" stadium now has an ice rink in it, but the huge grandstands are unused. London is doing OK with their leftover facilities.[2] The ones that aren't near a large city, such as Sochi, are abandoned.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ghosts-of-olympics-past?... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/davehillblog/2015/jul/23/...

This is an entirely unfair representation of the current state of Olympic venues in London. The Olympic stadium is used by West Ham Football Club every week for league and championship football. The Olympic village has been converted into state of the art affordable housing set in a gorgeous new green space.

The swimming and diving and velodrome facilities are state of the art, oversubscribed, and at the forefront of creating a new generation of athletes. I myself am having Kayaking lessons at the London White Water centre Olympic course.

Of course other major Olympic venues predated the bid and have continued to be in continuous use. Wimbledon, Wembley, the Excel, the O2, Eton Dorney...

London has not simply "abandoned" anything, and to pretend otherwise is dishonest.

I think you may have skimmed the article a bit too quick:

>London is novel among recent Olympic hosts in that its plan for the Olympics was focused primarily on what would happen after the games.

The photos, and most of the text, are about venues other than London. London is called out as an example of good olympic development, not bad.

Rio is a bad place to look at. The place is broken for the same reason its last 3 governors are on jail (and older ones have been there), not because it hosted the Olympics last year.

I don't think the ROI was positive, but I also don't think that level of abandonment will last.

Hey, at least they're in jail.

Yep. I do personally have the opinion that the World Cup and Olympics were worth much more than their cost just by the fact that they bankrupted every kind of government here and pressed the people into revolting.

I estimate they were the hightest ROI project our government ever had when considered that indirect gain.

I'd agree with you, I wish lots of our corrupt officials went to jail, but I'm afraid it's not happening...

Well, our most important of our corrupts are still free, and nobody is certain if they are ever going into jail (what is already a huge improvement).

The good part is that it takes an entire mafia to run a country. I doubt its heads alone are powerful enough.

Well, it (Lava Jato) still hasn't reached the Judicial, plus Pezão is in hot water and Lula possibly will make a 2018 return. With all the people taken out of poverty in the early 2000s having returned to it, perhaps people will somehow want Lula back....if not, it could be Bolsonaro following Temer. So much going on.

Yet, I don't think politicians will find many complicit business people to overprice services and pass them the difference anymore. And anybody that loses an election has a good chance of going to jail (except for Sarney it seems). Does that mean politicians will fight tooth and nail? Next year will be interesting. Also, don't forget rules for Legislative elections changed last year.

The worst Judicial offenders are working hard into winning some irrelevance so that nobody will care to mess with them. I can live with that kind of result.

And about Lula, I doubt he will be free by 2018 (he's being judged right now, but it takes time), but I'm also wary of who will win the elections.

Overall, I'm optimist.

I had hoped for more investment in sports in Brazil as a result of the games, and indeed the transportation improvements in/out of Barra are incredible. But unfortunately, the govt of Rio is now totally broke and on the brink of failure.

To put it into perspective, in much of the country they have stopped paying their police officers a salary. ((boggle)) Not the safest city in the first place, and maintenance was never a strong suit of Brazil. So the stadiums are just a symptom.

Did they move the futebol games to Engenhao or something? Why would Maracana be abandoned? Where are they playing all the games that still need to be played? It would make sense to rotate them to keep the stadiums used at least part of the month.

I'm trying to think of a way to maintain them and provide sports activities for kids. Normally, I dislike the branding of stadiums, but perhaps a corporate sponsorship of each stadium is a solution, while the govt should focus on its citizens.

Brasília made their WC stadium into a bus parking lot, IIRC. Recife built their WC stadium, the Arena Pernambuco, in a neighboring city, thinking it'd be a good way to build inland and incentivize development, but I'm pretty sure that has not happened. People would have to basically take the bus an hour or more to get there, and with 500 assaults on Recife buses in 2017 alone, it's a bit hard to do so.

A light certainly went out in Maracanã when they removed the "geral" (cheap seats for the working class) in 2005, long before the WC or OG.

Starts with a bad example. The maracaná is from the 1950 world cup, also used last world cup.

Not exactly. It wasn't the same stadium at all. The original Maracanã received something around 1.2 bi BRL (387.55 mi USD if we consider today's rate) in order to receive the Olympic games. Sergio Cabral' (former RJ governor) prision was motivated (among other things) because of that

So is it not going to be used again?

Probably it will. Problem is the "owner" (Odebrecht and EBX, both companies involved in many issues in the Lava-Jato investigation) don't have money to fix it, nor are potential "clients" (soccer teams) willing to contribute to fix it or to pay the amounts that are being charged to use it.

It was a good deal from 1950 up until the last world cup. The stadium had to go through a great change for the 2014 world cup, and some other reforms for the 2016 olympic games. The costs of it (including corruption) didn't pay off and now the stadium is a completely mess.

As the article also mentions, London spent a lot of it's olympic preparations thinking about what will happen to all the building and materials after the games. I was in design school at the time and we all submitted proposals for reusable architecture, etc. There was so much idealism, we all assumed things will be turned into sculptures or street furniture and the olympic park will itself will become an open site where people will hang out, etc. I wasn't in London for the games, but planned to go back to see the park after. When I got there a month after the Olympics, it was all abandoned, closed, fenced around and all you could see is giant empty parking lots. If they did any recycling I didn't see any of it.

Glad to see Vancouver doesnt show in any of these articles. It can be done well enough. Nobody seems to have any great complaints about those games (2010). The facilities are still in regular use ... which one would expect of a winter games in canada.

The facilities from the '88 games (Calgary) are similarly still actively used for training and by the public.

edit: '88 not '86

The Olympics were held in Calgary in 1988.

Yep, absolutely correct (d'oh).

'Average overrun for Games since 1960 is 156% in real terms' [1]. On the whole, costs of hosting Olympic Games is a net-negative for most cities.

I think it isn't as popular as it once was in attracting tourists; soccer world cups are probably better for that. Given that this is the case, they should just fix one host city/country and host the Olympics only there. It will save unnecessary expenses, especially for developing nations such as Brazil.

EDIT: Added source here

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_the_Olympic_Games

Politicians talk of lasting legacy but a lot of studies pretty much showed that no one wants to hang around once the Olympics is over. So, to recover the cost, maybe they need to host a really long Olympics?

Makes me think of the Roman's tradition of building wood theatres, but now instead of wood and clearly saying "temporary" it's cement promising "stability and prosperity".

Any local government or ngo that proposes to its local citizens that it should host an Olympics should immediately be investigated for corruption. (Tongue barely in cheek.)

Why not just have one venue, but have different hosts organise the opening ceremony? Stick one large venue on an island somewhere, and then hand the responsibility of running it to a different nation each time.

Really proud to be able to say I voted against hosting the olympics in Colorado a lifetime ago, seems like we are always a bit ahead of the times.

The Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center is excellent, though!

Living in Seoul, I played hockey at the olympic stadium there. There are regular baseball games and the entire area is very developed.

Big sport events are a huge scam. The corrupt organizations that have the rights keep money from ads, tickets and bribes, sometimes even requiring changes to the local law to protect their revenue. The supposed benefit for the host is that they can keep the infrastructure, paid by their own money. How generous!

Fortunately the public opinion has generally recognized this fact and there are protests against organizers. I for one, am proud that we told the fuckers to GTFO of Kraków.

Maracana Stadium was not built for the Olympics, it was just used as a venue. The stadium was built in 1950...

There is analogy here to be drawn with winning the lottery. Both look great but lead to ruin if not managed properly.

There really should be a rule that you have to maintain and operate the olympic venues as a public serivce for at least 4 years after their completion if you want to host.

Wouldn't it be better to plan further ahead and make a requirement that the venues need to be in use for X years prior to the games? This would ensure that the facilities are usable outside of the Olympics.

And what punishment would you get for breaking that rule?

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