That can never really happen again unfortunately. These days “stakeholders” demand and get promises for lots of goodies as an inducement to support the bid. Sports stadiums and infrastructure are actually the least less useful parts, they can be used after the games, its the massive infrastructure projects like roads, rail, airport which get people screwed.
I remember being in Athens a few months after the '04 Games and going the the Olympic Stadium. Serving the Olympic Stadium was a most massive Train Station, I mean bigger than Penn Station, Grand Central and Kings Cross; combined. And it was empty, except for me and my Dad. I wish I had taken a picture, would have been a nice illustration.
From what I have read that for hosting countries, smaller atheletic meets like the Asian Games, or the Commonwealth Games or regional games are actually much more useful, as they provide needed investment in sports. The UK’s improvement in many disciplines has been traced back to the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester and its legacy.
Mostly normal scaremongering. Though I don’t want to put all the blame on the press: the public obviously love “the sky is falling” stories, and it has particular resonance among those people eagerly awaiting the event.
Once it starts, I suspect plenty of things will not go 100% smoothly, but they won’t get much attention amidst stories of records being broken, new heroes being crowned, crushing disappointments etc.
New York didn’t host a Super Bowl. New Jersey did.
To be fair no one was predicting disaster. It was recognized that weather could be a factor with an outside chance of a snow storm affecting the game. The debate was more about if the game should be played in a location where weather would be a factor in game play rather than if it would turn the event into a disaster. There was more worry about the weather turning the game into a boring low scoring ground game than any danger.
L.A. is a candidate for the 2024 summer games. Boston originally was, but dropped out, leading the USOC to approach Los Angeles. So far, no U.S. city has announced their intention to go for the 2028 summer games.
There are a number of cities considering bids for the 2026 winter games: Salt Lake City, Reno–Lake Tahoe, Denver, Anchorage, Lake Placid, and Bozeman MT.
Salt lake city was by far the most successful winter Olympics in history and left behind an endowment to care for the Olympic venues so that they’re not crumbling like most.
Anchorage is also a head-scratcher. Finding uses for Olympic facilities after the games is always challenging, but it seems even more difficult in Anchorage - it’s just too remote to be a logical destination for large events. And won’t there be an issue with limited daylight hours for outdoor events?
Except for the bombing which killed one person and injured 111 others, not to mention the security guard who got falsely accused of planting it and hounded by the media.
I have no plans to watch any of this, but I feel warnings of disaster are highly exaggerated. Gloom and doom sells in the media and with many people
Three big reasons why it would be different that I can think of.
We are not just talking about soccer stadiums which I’m guessing get a lot of use in Brasil. There are multiple venue types that had construction delays.
Shit water. The World Cup didn’t have any matches that were played in water used to dump raw sewage.
Anchorage is just about exactly at the same latitude as Lillehammer, Norway, which hosted a very successful Winter Games in 1994. Don’t remember any big issues with daylight. --by mid February or so the problem isn’t nearly what it would be if the Olympics were held just after the new year.
True. It looks like Lillehammer had 7-8 hours of daylight during the 1994 games. It’s maybe not as easy to schedule events as with 10-12 hours, but it’s still plenty. My first non-thinking response is winter equals no daylight, but you’re right that there’s a big difference between end of December and end of February.
OK, maybe Alaska would actually be a pretty cool place to have the games. And the oil market will probably be recovered by then, so they’ll be flush with money to burn.