Cricket wants to be an Olympic sport. MMA has made noises about applying to join the Games. Baseball and softball want to return, and they’re facing plenty of competition from other sports.
So everyone wants to be in the Summer Olympics. But who wants to foot the bill and host them?
Not Boston, which withdrew its bid last summer. Not Hamburg, which rejected a bid in a referendum in November. Not Toronto, even though the Canadian city hosted the Pan American Games last year. This year’s Olympic host, Rio de Janeiro will surely feel some bidders’ remorse as it deals with unfinished projects and countless other headaches.
The problem is simple. The Summer Olympics are too big to have in one place. And in this age of satellite feeds and instant communication, there’s simply no need to condense the Games into one overburdened location.
The IOC has long made noises about limiting the size of the Olympics. But they’ve focused on the number of events (low 300s) and number of athletes (low 10,000s). In the meantime, they’ve added sports that require custom-built facilities, adding to the Games’ construction cost – and leaving behind more embarrassing “white elephants” that gather weeds and rust when the Games are gone.
Los Angeles may be one of the few cities that can host the Summer Olympics without a construction boom. The city hosted in 1984 and has continued to build more stadiums and arenas since then. “LA 2024 is about what we have, not what we’re going to build,” boasts the bid’s official site.
Still, the bid has some odd fits. Los Angeles FC’s new soccer stadium would be put to use – for swimming, diving and synchronized swimming. The Los Angeles Tennis Center also would be flooded for water polo.
Other cities could be worse off. Since Los Angeles last hosted, a Summer Games host’s must-have list has been expanded to include:
- A canoe/kayak slalom course. Some are simply gates hung in rivers. Others are giant engineering projects to send water through an artificial structure.
- A BMX course, complete with fan-pleasing drops and bumps.
- A golf course. That’s a handy 240 acres Rio must reshape, resod and secure.
- A mountain biking course.
- A beach volleyball venue.
- A rugby pitch.
- A triathlon course.
- Baseball and softball fields, if the sports can talk their way back onto the Olympic program.
- Tennis courts. (Baseball and tennis were demonstration sports in 1984.)
Only a couple of new sports – trampoline, table tennis, badminton, taekwondo – can take place in an existing arena or convention center. And all of this is on top of the existing arcania such as a cycling velodrome – which, even in LA’s imaginative venue-repurposing, is only used for track cycling. (Especially now that roller derby is often contested on flat tracks and doesn’t seem to be bidding for Olympic status, anyway.)
Going regional
One reason Los Angeles can accommodate these sports is the bid makes full use of a large region. The “Valley Cluster,” the Sepulveda Basin Rec Area, is nearly 30 miles from the “South Bay Cluster,” basically the StubHub Center complex at Cal State-Dominguez Hills.
But the Olympics are already split up in a few places by necessity. Early-round soccer games are already spread to distant venues, as those of us left stranded by the media bus in Qinhuangdao can attest. No one has suggested building an artificial sea in the middle of an inland city for the sake of the sailing events. Equestrian events are often far from the city center – in 2008, they were in Hong Kong, roughly the equivalent of London 2012 hosting events in Liechtenstein.
Los Angeles also plans to hold early rounds of soccer elsewhere, and they may take the idea a step farther: bid chairman Casey Wasserman has floated the idea of having early rounds of basketball in Madison Square Garden, all the way across the vast North American continent.
The notion of spreading things out isn’t new. The Atlanta 1996 Olympics sent many athletes to the University of Georgia in Athens (not Greece, but still 70 miles away). Softball was 100 miles the other direction in Columbus. The canoe/kayak slalom was a couple of hours away in Tennessee.
Then the Sydney 2000 Games took the opposite approach, cramming as much as possible into a dedicated Olympic Park. The concept was well-received, particularly among cranky journalists who were happy to spend less time on wayward buses, but it set a difficult precedent. How much can you put in one spot?
That philosophy even spread to the Winter Olympics, where Sochi organizers built a cluster on the coast and a cluster in the mountains, all amid skepticism that either venue would be well-used after the Games.
Sustainability
And it’s the “white elephants” that cause the most concern for Olympic hosts. After spending a couple billion dollars to build new facilities, will they be used for more than three weeks?
Atlanta did relatively well with repurposing. A tennis facility is still awaiting a productive future, but the Olympic stadium became Turner Field, the Atlanta Braves’ home for the next couple of decades. Much of the construction simply became part of college campuses at Georgia Tech and Georgia State.
Athens, on the other hand, has left a patchwork of legendary eyesores. Beijing simply walked away from many venues, not bothering to tear down structures such as the beach volleyball stadium that was supposed to be temporary. London has reversed the trend with a charming Olympic Park and many venues still in use, but a few plans have not yet come to fruition.
Realistically, only a handful of places in the world have the economic power and the steady stream of tourists to keep Olympic venues hopping after the Games. If the IOC really wants to spread the Olympic spirit more globally, another solution is needed.
Split the Games
Why should soccer be the only sport that plays elsewhere? Why not basketball? Handball? Track and field?
Imagine the Olympics not as a three-week festival that’s simply too much for anyone to follow, much less host, but as a summer-long series of events leading up to a scaled-back final celebration of marquee events.
The preliminary events would have the entire Olympic competition for some sports requiring specialized venues – track cycling, golf, canoe slalom, etc. They could also host early rounds of other sports, reducing the number of athletes traveling to the final Games and the number of venues needed.
Cities could bid to host some sports but not others. In a given year, a city with a nice velodrome, golf course and pool could bid for track cycling, golf and the early rounds of aquatic sports. Another city on another continent could host equestrian, shooting and modern pentathlon events.
Each host city would still be able to give a bit of the serendipity that gives the Olympics its charm. Rugby players could greet newly crowned cycling medalists. Golfers could putt for gold and then take in an early round of basketball.
But each sport also could get more attention. They wouldn’t just be one of more than 300 events in one place.
And candidate sports – baseball, softball, skateboarding, cricket, karate, etc – would have an easier case to make. Sports could gain coveted “Olympic status” without sending a full field of athletes to the final venue.
Then all of these preliminary festivals could build up toward a final Olympics that would scale back on the expenses but build up the drama. The final city really could build an Olympic park or simply use existing venues. To cover the basics, you’d just need a stadium or two, a pool, a big arena and perhaps a convention center or a couple of smaller arenas. Every event would be a big ticket.
A drastic makeover? Perhaps. But that’s what it’ll take to overcome opposition in cities like Boston.
“The IOC is clinging to a 19th-century business model in a 21st-century world that has passed it by,” Chris Dempsey, a co-chair of the No Boston Olympics lobbying force, told the Guardian. “Until it fundamentally reforms, it will continue to see potential hosts drop their bids, especially in cities like Boston, Hamburg, Munich, and Krakow, places where citizens realized they were being asked to host foot the bill for the IOC’s three-week, made-for-TV extravaganza.
“Boston is a prosperous, proud, world-class city filled with passionate sports fans, but our community decided we had far more important priorities for our civic energy and resources than hosting the Games.”
That’s the case against the Games as they stand now. Imagine if they continue to grow or have to toss out a sport like wrestling to accommodate something newer.
Instead, the Olympics should spread the burden. And spread the joy.
