February 8th, 2010
Maybe it’s just as well that Chicago did not get the Olympics. This story in The New York Times points out that a year and a half after Beijing’s hosting of the summer Olympic games of 2008, most venues are largely unoccupied. Same goes for the Athens Olympics structures from 2004.
This is a huge undertaking for any host city — Montreal just recently paid off the bonds for its 1976 games, and Olympic Stadium lost its ball team when the Expos left the tundra and went to D.C. (tundra south in the wake of the 30 inch snowstorm)Â to become The Washington Nationals.
I’ve always thought it a waste of money to build on such a vast scale for only two weeks of events. Instead, the worldwide sports community would do better to pick sites for both the winter and summer games and hold the events there every four years.
What would you suggest as the permanent site for the Summer Games? And the Winter Games?
September 28th, 2009
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a fan of bringing “Da Lympics” to Chicago in 2016. It would not only be good for Chicago, it would help all of Illinois and the Midwest as an economic development bonanza.
However, I think that Mayor Daley sending in President Obama to make a last-ditch pitch in Copenhagen this week (they make the announcement Oct. 2) is potentially bad news for the City of Big Shoulders. I’m suspicious also because Daley has been making statements that even if Chicago doesn’t get the Olympics, the effort to compete for them was worthwhile.
OK, here’s my hunch. The International Olympic Committee is intensely political. Its members play geopolitics to the 99th degree. They must accomplish a continental balancing act.
Geopolitically speaking, Tokyo, the Asian city among the four finalists, won’t get the Summer Games. Tokyo had them in 1964, Seoul, Korea had them in 1988 and Beijing had them in 2008. Also in the Eastern Hemisphere, south of the Equator, Sydney had the Summer Games in 2000 and Melbourne had them in 1956. (Both are in Australia.)
Madrid won’t get the Games, either. Barcelona, also a Spanish city (even though Barcelona people think they live in a land called Catalan) had the Summer Games in 1992, and numerous European cities have had the Summer Games, including Athens in 2004. London will have them in 2012.
Chicago won’t get them because the U.S. has hosted the Summer Games in Atlanta in 1996, Los Angeles in 1984 and 1932, and St. Louis in 1904. Montreal, Quebec had the Games in 1976, and Mexico City had them in 1968.
That’s quite a few Summer Games for North America — and the Winter Olympics are coming to Vancouver, B.C. in 2010.
There are two continents not represented in the Modern Olympiad, which began in Athens in 1896: Africa and South America.
We have no African entries, leaving the final finalist, the one from South America — cue samba music:
Rio De Janeiro. Rio will win the 2016 Olympics because, quite simply, it’s South America’s turn. Finally.
I hope I am wrong about this, and I’d love Chicago to win. But I’m just sayin’………
