Given the the state of affairs in Brazil, be it its abusive police force or generally appalling economy/political scene, why didn’t the IOC strip Rio’s of its award to host the Olympic Games months ago and choose a runner-up? Was it too late? What exactly saved their bid? Ha the IOC ever revoked an Olympic Games awarded to a country?
Just one, as far as I know, and that wasn’t so much the IOC revoking it as the host city rejecting it - Denver, for the 1976 Winter Olympics.
How do you imagine that the runner-up would have been able to prepare the facilities if they were just starting “months ago”?
And keep in mind that the Winter Games were hosted by Russia and the Summer Games by China recently. And for the 2022 Winter Games, the choice was between China and Kazakhstan.
Not to mention the Nazi Olympics. In the scheme of unfortunate host country politics, Brazil doesn’t really move the needle.
In response to the OP, the International Olympic Committee is more interested in money than in human rights.
Brazil looks good compared to the mess that is the soccer world cup in Qatar in 2022
Money … the losses would have been staggering … has there been any serious problems with the competitions yet?
In short, it would indeed be too late. The facilities to handle the Olympic Games are generally built for the games. And the old facilities are often not well-kept. There is not enough time to build all that in another city.
The 1916 Olympic Games were to be hosted in Berlin, but the entire event was cancelled due to Germany being a dick at the time. Similarly, the 1940 Summer Olympics were to be held in Tokyo. After Japan invaded China the IOC gave the games to the runner-up in the bidding, Helsinki. The Winter Games of the same year were to be held in Sapporo. The IOC were going to give the games to St. Moritz, but they couldn’t come to an agreement with the Swiss, and so in early 1939 they decided to have the Winter Games in the previous host city of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. A few months later Germany invaded Poland and the rest is history. The 1944 Summer Games were to be held in London and the corresponding Winter Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Both cancelled due to the whole world being a such a shitshow.
1916 … 1940 … the world was at war, everybody was too busy killing each other to celebrate the oneness of humanity.
Heard a piece on NPR today about some of the difficulties the ancient games had … some of that shit makes Brazil look like a dream come true …
The problems with Brazil are not show stoppers. If you look at the history of large scale international sporting events there is almost always some set of problems looming. Things are late, there are scandals. Somehow, it almost always ends up all-right on the night. The IOC is no stranger to these problems, and whilst worried, would have seen a long history of such.
The alternative - that of going elsewhere is essentially impossible anything less than a couple of years out. The option of going to another bidder is a non-starter - that country would be starting with an even greater set of scheduling and logistical issues than the holder of the bid. Even going to a country that had recently hosted the games would be near impossible. It isn’t just the sporting facilities - the stadiums, pools, playing fields etc. These will still be there. But all the accommodation and the support logistics for the games will have gone. It is usual that the entire accommodation infrastructure is actually built with the intent of selling it off as soon as the games are completed. This pays for it. So those countries that have held the games in the past will have Olympic villages that are fully populated with permanent residents - many of which now own the apartments.
It isn’t even clear how the IOC would actually strip a country of the right. You can be sure that the actual nitty gritty of the deal is, nowadays, a legally intricate affair, and the IOC might find it extraordinarily expensive and damaging to try, not unless there was some utterly overpowering reason. Like a major war, or the hosting nation had been washed away in a natural disaster.
After further spelunking in Wikipedia:
The 1904 Games were awarded to Chicago. The World’s Fair was going to be held in St. Louis at the same time and the organizers threatened to hold their own sports competition. IOC clout then wasn’t as great as it is now and they relented and allowed St Louis to host the games. Competitions took place over several months rather than a couple of weeks. With the World’s Fair going on at the same time, the Olympics were kind of a side show.
The 1908 Games were awarded to Rome but then Mt Vesuvius erupted in 1906, leading to the IOC deciding to give the Games to London.
So there you have it. The only events that have cancelled the Olympics are the two World Wars. The only events that have forced an Olympic venue to move are a large natural disaster in the host country and a World’s Fair.
Why would you think the IOC would revoke Rio’s rights to the Scamlympics? They paid the price, they get the goodies.
For better or worse. :dubious:
Because they’d already pocketed the bribes ?
( just a guess based on all the corruption the IOC stands accused of!)
The United States wouldn’t need more than a couple weeks. Just add the trillions of dollars to the debt, it’d be worth it to rub everyone else’s nose in it.
Well I guess you could hold it in Detroit. Lots of empty housing there to cope with the athletes and spectators.
This is the real problem. A bunch of stadia and facilities isn’t what causes the grief. It is getting the infrastructure ready. Most places that could hold an Olympics tend to be booked out years ahead, and are busy making money. None would take kindly to cancelling a couple of month’s lucrative bookings (not to mention how peeved those that got bumped would be) just to host the wretched spectacle.
If I may play the devil’s advocate and speak in defence of the IOC, I’d like to point out that it’s a fine line between “advocating human rights” and being involved in the cabals of politics. You could, of course, take events such as those going on in Brazil right now as grounds for shifting the games to another venue or cancelling them entirely; but you can bet that as soon as you start doing that, then you will, every time there are Olympics coming up, have various people from various sides of ongoing conflicts arguing why the current venue should be stripped of the Olympics for this or that reason. So my guess is the IOC decided not to get on that slippery slope and not even start relocating or cancelling the games for political reasons. They did not strip Berlin of the 1936 Olympics even though it was clear the Nazis would turn it into a huge propaganda show; they did not strip Moscow of the 1980 Olympics in spite of the war in Afghanistan that triggered the American boycott; they did not strip Beijing of the 2008 games in spite of the Chinese authorities cracking down on the riots in Tibet.
Which does not mean the IOC has never taken action for political reasons; for instance, in 1972 it expelled Rhodesia from the games after a number of African countries threatened to boycott the Munich Olympics if Rhodesia were to participate. But something like stripping the host city of the games would be a much more far-reaching move with a lot of follow-up problems, and I think it is wise of the IOC not to get involved in debates of that sort.
When the preparations for Athens 2004 seemed to be well behind program, there was a rumour that Sydney would be asked to reprise its 2000 hosting role. Almost certainly a media beat-up fuelled by the desire to remain ‘the best Olympics ever’, but possibly feasible because all the infrastructure was still in place and the pool of organisational talent had not completely dispersed to other mega-events yet. I think Sydneysiders would have welcomed the challenge.
It is still unclear just how evil, incompetent or compromised a city / country can be before the IOC will remove its hosting rights. I can’t see Bashar Al Assad jogging with an Olympic flame, but that puts the line somewhere between him and Russian and Chinese bids.
As for Rio, watching opening ceremony and first few days of competition suggests they are doing just fine.
In auto racing, IndyCar has had some races cancelled a few months before they happen (Brazil a couple years ago, Boston this year) or threaten (the earthquake in Japan damaged the Motegi oval, they ended up using the road course). While Boston was able to find a replacement a few hundred miles away in upstate New York, Brazil wasn’t. What you often hear is that tracks want a long time to prepare for it, to do things right, say a year (Boston ran into a strong NIMBY campaign). If something as relatively simple as an auto race can take that long, a huge event such as the Olympics must require years.
Moved to the game room.
Colibri
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