This whole thing has the same vibe as publicly funded sports franchise stadiums. If the Olympics are mostly going to be a big business with lucrative television rights that’s fine, but let the IOC run it that way: they (or private investors or creditors) put up the money to build all the required infrastructure and reap the rewards of holding the games. If the stadiums really are viable as long term post-games enterprises then they’ll have no trouble selling them afterwards for a good price. If they’re not, well, they get to decide if it’s still worth it based on the Olympic income. Or move to a cheaper model (renting existing facilities, more flexibility about multi-country locations for more specialized facilities, etc.).
I hope that we get past the “cities committing financial suicide for the prestige” model. It seems like that’s happening more which is good.
So what has changed in recent years to cause this? I don’t recall Lake Placid, Los Angeles, or Atlanta taking a bath or having decaying venues because they hosted the Olympics.
With two months prep time coming down from a pandemic? Newsom and the CA legislature would almost certainly say no, probably with the near-unanimous backing of Angelenos.
I found the location of twelve 250m velodromes (the Olympic regulation size) with a minute of googling:
Ashgabat Velodrome - Ashgabat, Turkmenistan
Ballerup Super Arena - Ballerup, Denmark
BGZ Arena - Pruszkow, Poland
Hong Kong Velodrome - Hong Kong, China
Lee Valley VeloPark - London, UK
Melbourne Park Multi-Purpose Venue - Melbourne, Australia
Minsk-Arena - Minsk, Belarus
Omnisport Apeldoorn - Apeldoorn, Netyherlands
Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome - Glasgow, UK
Velodrom - Berlin, Germany
Velodrome de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines - Montigny-le-Bretonneux, France
Velodromo Alcides Nieto Patino - Cali, Colombia
In fact, the Velodrome de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines is scheduled to be the site of the 2024 Olympic cycling events.
Montreal’s Velodrome was converted to a very successful “Biodome” (science/ecosystem museum) in 1992. It was rarely used after the 1976 Olympics.
With the loss of the Expos baseball team, Montreal’s Olympic stadium has been little used - mostly for shows and exhibitions, and the occasional event to which 50k spectators are expected to attend.
Or they could just hold the marathons at night. That’s what the IAAF did in 2019, when they staged the championships in Doha, Qatar; the races started at 11:59 p.m.
For that matter, the annual Rock ‘N’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon always begins around 9:00 p.m. or so. “Run the Strip at Night” is part of the race’s marketing strategy.
A lot of the colleges and high schools have 50 meter long pools, but only 25 yards across so not big enough. Plus they would need to be two meters deep, which a lot of pools have a shallower end. They’d also need a warm up pool there as well.
Pools are actually kind of easy now. They can build a pool in a week or so. If they wanted to move locations there’s no reason they couldn’t go to Omaha where the trials are being held.
In Qatar, the marathon course was a 7 kilometer loop around a roadway called the Doha Corniche, which runs along the waterfront. In addition to the regular street lighting, the IAAF floodlit the whole course.
The Las Vegas Marathon is an out-and-back course that begins and ends on the Strip, which, as @Dewey_Finn pointed out, has plenty of light. When it leaves the Strip, normal streets lighting suffices.
The biggest reason, IMO, would be what Cervaise stated in this thread:
Another reason, as I mentioned in that thread above, is that it would mess up the schedules of the 2022 world championships for all of the Olympics’ constituent sports.
Lastly, the condos in the Olympic Village were sold to an assorted group of buyers who were supposed to move in after the Olympics were finished, but due to the postponement, they haven’t been able to move in as planned for almost a year now. I don’t know how much political pull they have, but I can’t imagine they’d be too happy if the government postponed it once more.
Sure, but in the bigger picture, those seem to be pretty minor inconveniences in comparison to the much bigger and urgent crisis of the still-raging pandemic and enormous logistical difficulties of asking another city to host on short notice (and there currently is just about NO safe city, virus-wise, in the world right now anyway,) and the massive loss of face and revenue by canceling outright.
I have suggested before that the IOC work with Japan to move the Olympics a few months back or award them another Olympiad, but apparently the IOC already has their money and it’s either now or nothing.
I call upon countries to boycott these Olympics and future ones until the IOC makes it right to Japan should they make the responsible decision to push them off until safe.