This. I guess everyone already forgot the year of “OMG London Olympics are going to be a mess” stories.
It’s definitely a subsidized ego trip, but it’s more than politicians who benefit. Construction companies, advertising agencies, television netwroks, and other corporations who can suck at the teat can make a killing, as can people who own tourism- and travel-related businesses in and around the host city. It’s public subsidies for private profit.
As for the issue of safety, the last Olympics i recall connected with a terrorist incident was in the United States.
Except usually things aren’t so much of a mess this close to the opening ceremonies.
Except we are literally days away and they are not done with the hotels, the cultural center, the bathrooms literally have two commodes right next to each other (no wall), the plumbing cannot handle flushing toilet paper down it and the player accommodations are similar to a prison cell.
Remember the original bid quoted for London was 2.5 Billion. Bids are always massively lowballed to get the bid accepted, after that it’s massive cost overruns all the way.
Oh and Sochi, costing $50 billion apparently due to massive corruption.
During one of the Olympic Games, I heard an interesting idea. They docked several large cruise ships at a port near the events. The newest, biggest ships have the equivalent of 2,000-5,000 hotel rooms (along with dining facilities and so forth). So rather than building hotels that aren’t going to be needed after the Games are over, they just use the cruise ships. This seemed a clever thing to do. I wonder if they could also locate some of the venues on a large ship or barge, and then move it as needed. One problem with the Olympics is the wide variety of sporting facilities that are needed but aren’t needed later. (The Brits designed some of the arenas so they could be disassembled and moved after, and others were disassembled and recycled. That’s better than letting the venues rot, which is, I gather, what’s happened in some of these cities.)
People always bitch about the Atlanta games, but fuck y’all, we made a profit. A small one, but still a profit. 
Maybe. Or there are a few isolated instances of this which the media scrum are screeching about because it’s the only story they can think of to file, and it is a story which - with appropriate massaging and exaggeration - they can turn it into something their editors won’t turn up their noses at.
Agreed. If Canada never hosts the Olympics again, I’d be fine with that. Let some other country have the cost and the hassle.
Yup. Isn’t the IOC the most corrupt institution in the world (giving Russian politics a run for its money)?
And, in closing, my favourite quote from the Deadspin article:
Interesting story on NBC News this evening about the Russian hackers having a field day with people showing up with their iPhones and laptops. The correspondent had someone create a fake identity for him with fake contacts and the whole works. They took two brand new iPads to Sochi, took them out of the boxes, turned them on and entered the personal information. Within minutes, they had both been hacked and the computers hijacked. Nice place.
That’s not true. The South African 2010 WC also led to improved public transportand some nice parks and such. Although in pure economics terms it’s not profitable, nobody I’ve personally encountered here regrets us hosting it.
Such a relative definition. How many countries can stop planes from entering one’s window, or even just a pressure cooker bomb from going off?
Basically. I despise the politicians who sell their constituents’ rights to these fuckers.
You mean the one with an actual terrorist attack?
My feeling is that we should have a single Summer Olympics spot (preferably in Greece, since that’s where the games originated) and a single Winter Olympics spot (I dunno, Finland? Canada?) and be done with it.
Either that or we say fuck it and have the next Winter Olympics in Zimbabwe.
The Olympics is pretty dirty all around. I assume anyone who wins a medal is doping, and I assume any city that wins the rights to host it paid bribes. They’re just a big sleazy mess, the Sochi games are no different.
Funny … that’s exactly what my dad said after the Munich Olympics.
A few isolated instances of entire hotels (not just for the media but also for athletes) not being completed? Um…ok.
Maybe some things are being blown out of proportion, but to my mind, media sensationalism is hardly necessary when buildings meant for imminent human habitation are not complete.
I wonder what will be the biggest disaster of these games: the rampant hacking/id theft, the terrorism, or the total lack of facilities?