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Things don't always work out as planned. THey thought they could just implode and demolish Candlestick with a few sticks of dynamite. But NOOOOOOOOOO! Neighbors complained -- and maybe rightly so -- that all that dust will just blow into their homes and cause health problems. So now, they are just manually tearing it down -- TRIPLING the cost. You have to think how these stadia will be dismantled and really figure that into the whole equation.

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Things don't always work out as planned. THey thought they could just implode and demolish Candlestick with a few sticks of dynamite. But NOOOOOOOOOO! Neighbors complained -- and maybe rightly so -- that all that dust will just blow into their homes and cause health problems. So now, they are just manually tearing it down -- TRIPLING the cost. You have to think how these stadia will be dismantled and really figure that into the whole equation.

Well have you seen the houses around candlestick? I don't think dust would be the biggest issue.

They might, but.. look at Rio 2016. They offered an athletics venue separate from the main stadium. The IOC was okay with that one though because they wanted Rio in that time and place and were willing to make a compromise there. When it's the right time and place for a bid from Africa, there will probably be some compromises there.

Then you have the United States. If the IOC wanted an American city for the 2024 Olympics, they might be willing to compromise. But if they have their sights elsewhere, that's not going to happen. We've said here before that we tend to make a bigger deal than necessary about how important the main stadium is. I'm probably more guilty of that than anyone here. So yes, I believe there will come a time when the IOC is more willing to accept a less than ideal solution from a U.S. city, but a lot of that will depend on who and when we're talking about.

Was the two stadium thing really a compromise? I see it as more of a unique situation that we could now see more often in the future (Istanbul 2020, Boston 2024...)

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Was the two stadium thing really a compromise? I see it as more of a unique situation that we could now see more often in the future (Istanbul 2020, Boston 2024...)

It was. It would've worked best for the city. However, I don't recall Boston housing a world-class existing T&F venue or a place large enough to host the ceremonies. Rio was able to pass that off 'cause they have the Maracanã as well as some special treatment for being a new frontier.

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It was. It would've worked best for the city. However, I don't recall Boston housing a world-class existing T&F venue or a place large enough to host the ceremonies. Rio was able to pass that off 'cause they have the Maracanã as well as some special treatment for being a new frontier.

Yeah I don't know why I mentioned Boston.

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How many people attend T&F events? Can the Reggie Lewis center possibly host some events?

A metric fuckton attend T&F (obviously helps that it's in the largest stadium). The main problem is indoor track facilities don't have tracks that are the IAAF standard; indoor tracks are a bit smaller. And that doesnt even include the fact the Reggie Lewis CEnter only hold about 5k people

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Crowds will come to attend the OLYMPIC T&F events. But after that, what do you do with the friggin' stadium? That's the rub.

This. The problem with track & field at the Olympics is that you have sparsely attended qualifying sessions in the mornings, but then they can fill the stadium for the evening sessions where the big events are. For Rio, they put some finals in the morning sessions which they say is to make things more attractive for television rights holders, but it also won't hurt ticket sales.

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Am fully aware that you can hide all that scaffolding with bunting*, gold leaf if you want; but it's still a jerry-rigged paste-up job.

* And all that covering is again a waste of material and money since it will be just thrown away anyway. So how does that help lower the costs?

The London stadium "wrap" was partly reused (nice for awnings in sunny climates, though Dow and the IOC talked up the Brazilian reuse project way beyond its real magnitude) and partly recycled.

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Back on topic, in Boston's case we're talking about possibly turning a large athletics stadium into a much smaller football stadium. That's much, much harder and it may be the case that a 100% tear-down does turn out to be better. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that, but it's not my money which would be paying for it. It's obviously for Bostonians to figure out.

From what I've seen, though, Boston's plan is not to convert the main stadium at Widett Circle to a football stadium when the Games would be over. The NE Revolution have announced an interest in building a stadium on a site adjacent to Widett Circle. Boston's plan is a 100% teardown as far as I know.

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The sightlines aren't that bad in Olympic Stadiums, retractable seating helps. The wrap around our Olympic Stadium during 2012 looked quite good, so did the sustainability of the Stadium.

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It's a catch-22. The idea of a temporary stadium that can be taken down after the Olympics is a noble concept that sounds viable, but there's no basis for it. The outcome of London's Olympic Stadium has been well discussed. Most recently Incheon constructed a 60,000 seat stadium for the Asian Games (when they already had one from the World Cup that would've done just fine) with plans to scale it down to 20,000 afterwards and now those plans are on hold. Incheon is likely going to be stuck with a 60,000 seat white elephant. Even scaling a stadium down to 20,000 for soccer is problematic. What happens with the seats that are removed? I would imagine when he costs of removing, reconfiguring, and finally disposing of the parts that are removed and the cost is a lot higher than what is originally projected. The 12,000 seat basketball arena for London worked out well, but finding a use for it afterwards was a bust. If you cannot reuse a 12,000 seat arena, how are you going to reuse 40-50,000 temporary seats? Heck, Pyeongchang is building a temporary 50,000 seat stadium just for the ceremonies. They'll probably take that thing down and just dispose of it (they already are planning to demolish the speed skating oval after the Olympics, completely ridiculous)

The best example where I can see this actually working is the stadium used for the Dubai Rugby Sevens and I use the term stadium loosely. It has no fixed seats, not even bleachers, It's essentially scaffolding with terraces constructed in and covered with tarps. After the Dubai Sevens, it's taken down and reused the following year.

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If you cannot reuse a 12,000 seat arena, how are you going to reuse 40-50,000 temporary seats?

EXCELLENT POINT!! And even if another arena/stadium is on the hunt for X number of seats, there's the cost of transporting them AND whether or not the receiving stadium may like the style or color scheme of the seats being passed on to them. I also think that chair manufacturers will offer very favorable sales terms (possibly even undercutting the pass-on costs of the old set) to new stadia that will make the arena owners prefer to order entirely new seats instead.

The whole tear-down, recycling idea is only noble on the paper it's written on; but the cold reality is vastly, vastly different.

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I can't find the link but columnist Steve Buckley from the Boston Herald suggested the Olympic Stadium be turned into the new home of the Red Sox. Replacing Fenway? Never will happen. The only sports team that I could even remotely think of needing a new stadium would be Boston College. Alumni Stadium is if I'm not mistaken, the oldest stadium in the ACC though it has had a few upgrades over the years. The biggest problem would be there's nowhere on the Boston College campus to put a new stadium. While BC fans like their football, they aren't going to fill up a 60-75,000 seat stadium the way a school like Florida State can. So then you build the stadium off-campus. There'd be an uproar among alumni and the students over the travel. Regarding the post about sightlines, as early as the 1990s many college football teams (Texas, Ohio State, Washington, Stanford) had large stadiums with an athletic track. All of them had the tracks removed as part of extensive renovations in part to increase capacity and to improve sightlines. I've been to football games where even in the first ten rows the field seems very far away.

It's all problematic which is one of the reasons I was surprised Boston was chosen in the first place.

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I know San Francisco has the Stadium problem, but San Francisco or even Washington had a better chance then Boston does. Don't bother me, 2024 is looking like it's coming to Europe.

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I get the idea of choosing Boston because the northeast is a place where the U.S. hasn't hosted a SOG but as far as Boston being better than Washington or San Francisco, that's debatable. Washington would be a security nightmare. San Francisco is attractive but California has already had the Olympics three times (though I will say the opportunity to build an Olympic Stadium for either the Oakland Raiders or Oakland Athletics might have been a plus over Boston's temporary proposal) so I suppose that played into the decision.

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I know San Francisco has the Stadium problem, but San Francisco or even Washington had a better chance then Boston does. Don't bother me, 2024 is looking like it's coming to Europe.

Washington would've been too alienating, geopolitically speaking. Plus, technically speaking, they still had issues of their own as well.

San Francisco also lacked in the technical category. Otherwise, they would've been chosen. What do you think, that the USOC is that dumb? They went on record saying in IDEAL circumstances, that San Fran would be their pick. So obviously, the circumstances this time out weren't ideal enough for them.

Los Angeles was really the only other U.S. bid that would've been better positioned than Boston, technically speaking. And besides, if 2024 "is looking" like it's coming to Europe, then it wouldn't have made one bit of difference which U.S. city it is/was anyway.

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psst...ignore him...psst

Can you stop getting involved.

Anyway, before America even announced their Bidder, I thought Boston had the least chance out of the 4. I think San Francisco would have given them a better chance. I stand by that. Although, I acknowledge San Francisco has the Stadium problem.

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How did Boston have the least chance outta the four, when even the bookies had Boston at 2-to-1?

It also wasn't just the stadium that San Francisco had the issue in (since Boston also has that same problem), but several other factors, like lack of political cohesiveness (which is crucial to any Olympic bid), a more spread-out venue plan & the potential to have much more local opposition than Boston could've faced. So it wasn't just one thing, but a collection of several issues that kept San Francisco back.

Just name alone wasn't going to get San Francisco over the finish line (which seems to be your only argument) amidst potential strong European opposition. All one has to do is see New York 2012 for precedence. A stronger Boston bid or a half-assed San Francisco one both would not have faired really well against stronger European rivals IMO. So why not go with the one then that is much less likely to implode in the international campaign. That was where the USOC was really facing its dilemma.

So it doesn't matter which one you stand by, but by the one that the USOC felt would stand by them, no matter what. And outta this lot of four (other than been there, done that Los Angeles), that was Boston.

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How did Boston have the least chance outta the four, when even the bookies had Boston at 2-to-1?

It also wasn't just the stadium that San Francisco had the issue in (since Boston also has that same problem), but several other factors, like lack of political cohesiveness (which is crucial to any Olympic bid), a more spread-out venue plan & the potential to have much more local opposition than Boston could've faced. So it wasn't just one thing, but a collection of several issues that kept San Francisco back.

Just name alone wasn't going to get San Francisco over the finish line (which seems to be your only argument) amidst potential strong European opposition. All one has to do is see New York 2012 for precedence. A stronger Boston bid or a half-assed San Francisco one both would not have faired really well against stronger European rivals IMO. So why not go with the one then that is much less likely to implode in the international campaign. That was where the USOC was really facing its dilemma.

So it doesn't matter which one you stand by, but by the one that the USOC felt would stand by them, no matter what. And outta this lot of four (other than been there, done that Los Angeles), that was Boston.

Well, I felt they had the least chance of hosting out of the others.
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