IIRC, this is why Los Angeles was the only city that bothered to bid for 1984. I think the only building the had to build was the velodrome - and they built it in such a way that it could be moved (to Colorado Springs) after the fact.
As to the OP, I am in the “don’t bother; you’ll never get all of the hotels for the fans, much less anyplace for the athletes to stay, arranged in time” camp. I am also in the “you don’t have to hold every event in the same country” camp; in 1956, the equestrian events were held in Sweden when Australia would not let athletes bring in horses from outside of the country. (I’m pretty sure the reason they still have all of the events in one place is, “It’s not really the Olympics if you don’t - among other things, how do you have the Parade of Nations?”)
As I have been suggesting since the 1980’s, and is even more relevant today with the issues Greece has been having;
Let’s hold the games every year in the same location in Greece. All the infrastructure will be in place and can be used for other games on a regular basis between Olympics.
It will eliminate a lot of the corruption associated with the Olympics and their decisions to award games.
It will save hundreds of billions of dollars in construction that is used once and then left to rot.
It’s a prime example of the very human attitude of We’ve Always Done It This Way And We Can’t Change It Now. Back in 1920 it worked okay to have the Games all in one place (in this case, Antwerp, except for the sailing events) given that there were 30 countries, a couple of thousand athletes, way fewer coaches, hangers-on, and visitors, and a much lower expectation of what the venues would look like.
But if there had never been any Olympics and someone were to say today: “I know! Let’s have a major athletic competition! Let’s extend it across three weeks, hold three hundred plus events, host 11,000 athletes from nearly every country in the world (not to mention coaches, scorekeepers, trainers, and other entourage-type people), and find hotel rooms for six oodles of visitors!” the next line would probably not be “And let’s cram them all together in one city!”
It would make much more sense to do it World Cup-style, dispersing the events around a single nation (even two or three, if they’re small and cooperate well): swimming events here, soccer there, beach volleyball on an actual beach, whitewater kayaking on an actual whitewater river. Events from Seattle to Miami and Minneapolis to New Orleans.
But we’re so used to the single-city situation that we can no longer see a different setup as sufficiently Olympian. And ratings would probably tumble. KInda too bad, because it’s harder and harder to defend doing it using the current model–we outgrew it in a lot of ways a long while back.
Spreading it out seems like a winner. Giving the hosts cities a narrow, targeted goal is much cheaper and much more likely to result in something useful after the olympics are gone - they can put in a bid for whatever facility they otherwise could make use of, instead of having to build every kind of facility. A smaller people-handling footprint means more cities could hold events - smaller cities that don’t have a hotel capacity of tens of thousands of people could host events.
I’m not even sure if it would make the olympics seem like less of an event. You don’t care about 80% of the sports now, but what if a city near you - a city that’s not traditionally an olympics-class city - were hosting some events? It’d probably increase your interest in them. It might actually involve more of the world in the events.
We’re going to reach a point in a decade or two where no one is going to want to host the damn things - we’re already almost there. But I think lots of cities would jump at the chance to host just the sailing events or just the outdoor track and field events or just the indoor team sports events, or just the shooting events - they might already have the facility and capacity, or they could build it for a reasonable price.
If this doesn’t happen, I suspect it’s because of the terribly corrupt nature of the process.
Yep - you can run the Olympics in the same two week period, but spread the events around the world. The opening ceremonies can have representatives from all the countries, and then for each event you just switch your netork covarage to that city.
I think that would be WAY cooler. It would allow people to see the instant contrast between the various nations involved. It would be a good opportunity for the audience to learn more culture and geography. On TV it can look just as integrated as the Olympics look now in terms of it being one large event, but it would take on an entirely new global feel, and might even create a bigger audience because each country’s population would feel more invested.
But there are probably fewer opportunities for large scale graft this way, so it will likely never happen.
The joke in Lake Placid was that they bid for the 1980 Winter Olympics to celebrate that they had finally paid off the last bills from the 1932 Winter Olympics.
Leaving aside all the other reasons why it’s too late for London. The majority of the venues are not in fact available anymore.
To take the most obvious example. West Ham FC have a 99 year lease on the stadium, and they’re playing a match there 3 days after the next Olympics are scheduled to start.