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4 hours ago, anthonyliberatori said:

Poor Madrid. I have always thought of Barcelona as the prime example of the city using the Games to thoroughly develop and get the world recognition, and it proved very successful. I was hoping that Madrid would do the same, and all of their bids have seemed to prove that. I really want Spain to host another Olympics in the next 20-40 years, I definitely think they could do something similar to Madrid like they did with Barcelona. But if Paris was going to win 2024 anyway, Madrid 2028 wasn't going to happen. I'd hope they'd save themselves the trouble. If it is Paris for 2024, and Los Angeles for 2028, Madrid may have a chance at 2032.

Barcelona was the perfect storm being the right city in the right place at the right time.  There's no city out there, let alone Madrid, that could replicate all of those circumstances.  And that's to say nothing of the issues FYI brought up, namely the Spanish economy (which is faring a little better than when they last bid).  They'd have had a much better shot at 2020 if not for that.  They'll probably make another run at it at some point, but for reasons you stated, that's unlikely to happen before 2032.

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8 hours ago, anthonyliberatori said:

Poor Madrid. I have always thought of Barcelona as the prime example of the city using the Games to thoroughly develop and get the world recognition, and it proved very successful. I was hoping that Madrid would do the same, and all of their bids have seemed to prove that. I really want Spain to host another Olympics in the next 20-40 years, I definitely think they could do something similar to Madrid like they did with Barcelona. But if Paris was going to win 2024 anyway, Madrid 2028 wasn't going to happen. I'd hope they'd save themselves the trouble. If it is Paris for 2024, and Los Angeles for 2028, Madrid may have a chance at 2032.

Barcelona had the huge advantage of the Olympic Park built for Expo 1929. Madrid would need to construct too much.

It is the same reason Los Angeles has been successful with the Olympics while New York has not: without the USC campus and its stadium, other venues and dorms LA would not be able to host the Olympics.

Edited by Nacre
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7 hours ago, Nacre said:

Barcelona had the huge advantage of the Olympic Park built for Expo 1929. Madrid would need to construct too much.

IDK where you get that, cuz that was part of Madrid's 2020 pitch, that over 80% of their venues were already existing & very little had to be built. Yet at the same time, they were also selling that somehow the Olympics was still going to create jobs & "help their economy". Obviously the IOC didn't buy the latter, but the former definitely wasn't their problem.

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6 hours ago, FYI said:

IDK where you get that, cuz that was part of Madrid's 2020 pitch, that over 80% of their venues were already existing & very little had to be built. Yet at the same time, they were also selling that somehow the Olympics was still going to create jobs & "help their economy". Obviously the IOC didn't buy the latter, but the former definitely wasn't their problem.

I thought the same. What was Krow's famous quote about their costs? "Their budget was five Euros and a handful of groupons". To be fair, I do seem to remember their bid plan was indeed heavily laden with existing venues, many quite new. I'd forgotten that old conundrum they were putting though - "our games will be super cheap, we don't have anything to build, but we need them to create thousands of jobs and stimulate our economy".

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21 hours ago, Roger87 said:

Now Sweden in the list of fake news. There was a "violent incident" yesterday according to Pr. Trump. Add more names to the list.

 

It's well known the Alt Right and people from certain boards love to mock and make lots of fake news about Sweden because of the inmigration thing and their wish of being a multicultural society. The same people which supported Trump. So I wouldn't really take those statements seriously.

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43 minutes ago, Ikarus360 said:

It's well known the Alt Right and people from certain boards love to mock and make lots of fake news about Sweden because of the inmigration thing and their wish of being a multicultural society. The same people which supported Trump. So I wouldn't really take those statements seriously.

The problem is the president of the United States takes those statements seriously. 

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17 hours ago, Nacre said:

Barcelona had the huge advantage of the Olympic Park built for Expo 1929. Madrid would need to construct too much.

It is the same reason Los Angeles has been successful with the Olympics while New York has not: without the USC campus and its stadium, other venues and dorms LA would not be able to host the Olympics.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.  I suppose that's like saying Michael Phelps would not be able to win gold medals if he didn't know how to swim.

I think it gets over-stated sometimes how much a city does or doesn't have to build.  Yes, LA is better positioned to host an Olympics than any other US city.  No sh1t that wouldn't be the case if they didn't have venues.  Doesn't mean that by comparison, Madrid would have to construct "too much."  Or that because Paris has to build a village, that's a problem for them.  

No city that is or might be bidding for the Olympics anytime in the near future has everything they need.  That includes LA.  They have more in place than virtually any other prospective Olympic bid city, but it's not as if they're ready to go tomorrow.  By contrast, of course Barcelona had a leg up with everything they had in place.  Don't use that as a basis to say that other cities have too much.  Building venues for an Olympics is not necessarily a bad thing, if it's done right.  Unfortunately, most cities can't (or don't) do it right.

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32 minutes ago, Quaker2001 said:

Thank you, Captain Obvious.  I suppose that's like saying Michael Phelps would not be able to win gold medals if he didn't know how to swim.

I think it gets over-stated sometimes how much a city does or doesn't have to build.  Yes, LA is better positioned to host an Olympics than any other US city.  No sh1t that wouldn't be the case if they didn't have venues.  Doesn't mean that by comparison, Madrid would have to construct "too much."  Or that because Paris has to build a village, that's a problem for them.  

No city that is or might be bidding for the Olympics anytime in the near future has everything they need.  That includes LA.  They have more in place than virtually any other prospective Olympic bid city, but it's not as if they're ready to go tomorrow.  By contrast, of course Barcelona had a leg up with everything they had in place.  Don't use that as a basis to say that other cities have too much.  Building venues for an Olympics is not necessarily a bad thing, if it's done right.  Unfortunately, most cities can't (or don't) do it right.

Well said. There are some bids like Atlanta and London that do it correctly, either building venues to serve as a long term legacy venue or to be temporary, and then there are some bids like Athens and Sochi where glitz, glamour and impression were put before economic sense and liability, causing many white elephants and overspending. Quite a shame actually, could you think of how well Athens 2004 could've been if they actually made the OV into public housing, some of the venues into schools, used the facilities to host more sporting events in the future, etc? Quite a shame that Athens 2004 can be considered as a large factor for Greece's current economic situation.

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23 minutes ago, anthonyliberatori said:

Quite a shame that Athens 2004 can be considered as a large factor for Greece's current economic situation.

While your other points are good, as far as this one however, err, no. The games and the spending on them were just a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the other structural problems - it's welfare funding, tax evasion etc - that put Greece in the financial straights it found itself in. A symptom or a shorthand lazy illustration of the type of things that led to its predicament, perhap, but the games themselves were a minor factor at best in its dismal ledger books.

The games might be a catalyst to profligate and irresponsible spending in a some hands, but let's not rush to demonise them as the source of all economic woes and evils besetting the world at the moment.

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23 minutes ago, anthonyliberatori said:

Well said. There are some bids like Atlanta and London that do it correctly, either building venues to serve as a long term legacy venue or to be temporary, and then there are some bids like Athens and Sochi where glitz, glamour and impression were put before economic sense and liability, causing many white elephants and overspending. Quite a shame actually, could you think of how well Athens 2004 could've been if they actually made the OV into public housing, some of the venues into schools, used the facilities to host more sporting events in the future, etc? Quite a shame that Athens 2004 can be considered as a large factor for Greece's current economic situation.

What Rols said.  The Olympics are often looked at as a symbol of what has gone wrong with Greece, but they're hardly the main cause of Greece's economic downturn.  In their defense, a lot of the escalating costs, particularly related to security, came as a result of 9/11, so that's not so much the organizer's faults.  But the post-Games planning and execution was obviously not as good as it should have been.  Easy for us to talk about what could have been,  Much harder to put all that to action.  There were some civic and urban development initiatives that did benefit Athens, but certainly it came at too great of a cost.

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31 minutes ago, Sir Rols said:

While your other points are good, as far as this one however, err, no. The games and the spending on them were just a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the other structural problems - it's welfare funding, tax evasion etc - that put Greece in the financial straights it found itself in. A symptom or a shorthand lazy illustration of the type of things that led to its predicament, perhap, but the games themselves were a minor factor at best in its dismal ledger books.

The games might be a catalyst to profligate and irresponsible spending in a some hands, but let's not rush to demonise them as the source of all economic woes and evils besetting the world at the moment.

 

18 minutes ago, Quaker2001 said:

What Rols said.  The Olympics are often looked at as a symbol of what has gone wrong with Greece, but they're hardly the main cause of Greece's economic downturn.  In their defense, a lot of the escalating costs, particularly related to security, came as a result of 9/11, so that's not so much the organizer's faults.  But the post-Games planning and execution was obviously not as good as it should have been.  Easy for us to talk about what could have been,  Much harder to put all that to action.  There were some civic and urban development initiatives that did benefit Athens, but certainly it came at too great of a cost.

I misworded what I was trying to say. What I meant was that Athens 2004 was one of the general starters to their economic issues, as opposed to one of the large issues in whole. You're both correct, there are many other causes for Greece's economic issues, but the citizens having to pay an extremely large amount of taxes in the early 2000s (after just switching to the Euro, which obviously caused issues, as Greece's currency was heavily inflated beforehand), and receive little back and end up with billions in debt and rotting venues, is certainly what you said Sir Rols, "a drop in the bucket". Work culture, unemployment, politics and benefit/entitlement issues were much larger issues that set Greece on the financial plan that they are on.

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12 hours ago, FYI said:

IDK where you get that, cuz that was part of Madrid's 2020 pitch, that over 80% of their venues were already existing & very little had to be built. Yet at the same time, they were also selling that somehow the Olympics was still going to create jobs & "help their economy". Obviously the IOC didn't buy the latter, but the former definitely wasn't their problem.

The venues exist, but would have to be massively expanded and/or upgraded. Madrid's athletics stadium only seats 20,000, for example. Compare that to Paris or Los Angeles, where little to no public money will have to be spent upgrading venues just for the Olympics.

1 hour ago, Quaker2001 said:

Thank you, Captain Obvious.  I suppose that's like saying Michael Phelps would not be able to win gold medals if he didn't know how to swim.

It may be obvious but nevertheless it is true. Cities usually break even on the operational cost of the Olympics. It is the security and capital costs that get them into trouble.

The IOC would love to see bids from Madrid, Hamburg, San Francisco, Toronto, etc. But it seems very unlikely that the citizens of any these cities want to spend 5 billion euros/dollars/whatever on stadiums and arenas that will be used for three weeks.

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29 minutes ago, Nacre said:

The venues exist, but would have to be massively expanded and/or upgraded. Madrid's athletics stadium only seats 20,000, for example. Compare that to Paris or Los Angeles, where little to no public money will have to be spent upgrading venues just for the Olympics.

You mean other than the $300 million for the temporary overlay to the Coliseum?  Which is completely separate from the money that USC is spending to upgrade the stadium for football.  The cool thing is that we know exactly how much money is being spent on venues (page 96)..

https://la24-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/pdf/LA2024-canditature-part3_english.pdf

The amount of money being spent on venue infrastructure is well north of $1 billion.  Not all of that is specific to venue upgrades and a lot of it is operations.  LA undoubtedly has less to spend in this area than virtually any other city would, but still, it's a lot more than "little to no public money."  Let's not pretend this doesn't come at a cost, and yes I know sources like sponsorships and broadcast rights cover most of the costs.  It's still going to take a lot of cash to get many of these venues Olympic-ready, particularly the most important of those venues which as it is CANNOT host the Olympics' premiere sport.

1 hour ago, Nacre said:

It may be obvious but nevertheless it is true. Cities usually break even on the operational cost of the Olympics. It is the security and capital costs that get them into trouble.

The IOC would love to see bids from Madrid, Hamburg, San Francisco, Toronto, etc. But it seems very unlikely that the citizens of any these cities want to spend 5 billion euros/dollars/whatever on stadiums and arenas that will be used for three weeks.

And if those cities can't come up with a legacy plan for those stadiums and arenas, then they shouldn't bid in the first place.  But to your first point, it is possible (although exceedingly difficult) for those legacy plans to offset some of those capital costs.  That's where the narrative needs to change (and perhaps cities like Rio that don't have enough existing infrastructure need to be avoided) where these facilities are essentially for one-time use and that's it.  It's not impossible to pull that off, although it's understandable that many cities don't think it's worth the risk.

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What's interesting in the article, the members named that seem to be in opposition are ones representing countries that could be interested in bidding for 2028, like Australia & Turkey. But senior IOC member Dick Pound from Canada, looks to be much more open to idea, considering all the other checks & balances are in place. And considering that Canada may want a stake at 2028 as well, I'll take his views with less reservation than the others.

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33 minutes ago, FYI said:

What's interesting in the article, the members named that seem to be in opposition are ones representing countries that could be interested in bidding for 2028, like Australia & Turkey. But senior IOC member Dick Pound from Canada, looks to be much more open to idea, considering all the other checks & balances are in place. And considering that Canada may want a stake at 2028 as well, I'll take his views with less reservation than the others.

Yep. Ironically someone would thought Canada (The realistic contender for 2028) would have been against the idea, but no. The opposition came from Australia, Turkey and (lol) Azerbaijan. Realistically speaking, only Australia can have a real deal of protest from that list. So I guess, in a implicite way, Canada would prefer Calgary 2026.

Also, this article is showing a division between the senior and younger voters. Seniors are accepting this Bach's solution, as a sort of "big problems, radical solutions", while the youngers are still hoping for the 2028 race.

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7 hours ago, RuFF said:

You have to remember that there is a 1/2 Billion contingency for overruns built into the budget. But, it "seems" to me that you are saying that all bids go over budget and Paris' of course will also go over budget. One of the main differences, it seems, is that the Paris' budget relies heavily on the Public dime. In Los Angeles we already know how the public feels about placing their tax dollars in sport, it's just not going to happen. It seems like across the board it just hasn't happened, and I doubt it's about to start happening now, so it would seem that private money is already well versed at what happens when sport comes knocking for public handouts. 

Olympic Proportions: Cost and Cost Overrun at the Olympics 1960-2012

Yea, that's not how budgets and spending work, especially when it comes to the Olympics.  As zeke noted (and he's 100% right to correct me), we know how much LA *plans* to spend on the Olympics.  How much they actually spend may not be the same number.  The taxpayers in LA don't get to weigh in on that.

They say the overlay for the Coliseum will cost $300 million.  What happens when there are unforeseen issues and it winds up costing $320 million?  What happens if there are many cost over-runs that eat through the entire contingency fund?  What if the expected revenues aren't as high as the organizers thought they would be?  And yes, it should go without saying that this all applies to any potential host city, including Paris.

We all know LA's history and what they did with 1984.  If they think they can do it again and keep things under budget, more power to them.  But what if the Olympics costs them more than they anticipated?  The response can't be "well, private money knows what they're doing, so they won't need public money."  What if they do?  What if that does start happening?  Once LA signs that host city contract, they're bound to deliver an Olympics.  Someone is going to have to pay for it.

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2 hours ago, Quaker2001 said:

 But what if the Olympics costs them more than they anticipated?  The response can't be "well, private money knows what they're doing, so they won't need public money."  What if they do?  What if that does start happening?  Once LA signs that host city contract, they're bound to deliver an Olympics.  Someone is going to have to pay for it.

That's what I wanna know...

PS - I don't think your friend understands where the "1/2 billion contingency" comes from. 

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7 hours ago, FYI said:

What's interesting in the article, the members named that seem to be in opposition are ones representing countries that could be interested in bidding for 2028, like Australia & Turkey. But senior IOC member Dick Pound from Canada, looks to be much more open to idea, considering all the other checks & balances are in place. And considering that Canada may want a stake at 2028 as well, I'll take his views with less reservation than the others.

Well, actually, they're the only two mentioned that might stand to lose out (and at this stage, I haven't seen Turkey mentioned in any lists of likewise or hopefuls for bidding 2028). The others are from China, Taiwan and Heiberg from Norway (I don't know where Roger87 got Azerbaijan from), all Executive Board members or very influential in the IOC. I don't think you can dismiss them as having something to lose, or negative nancies. It certainly shows that Bach doesn't have the exec board fully behind him on the proposal. 

Also to consider is one thing the membership at large has always been very keen to protect from erosion is their precious vote for the host cities. With many of their other privileges stripped over the years, the hosting vote is their one real big power they have. They could well see this as an attempt by the President or the EB to strip them, or sideline them, of that role. If, as a number of those quoted say, it would be the type of move that could only be implemented by a vote at a full session, I think it would be a strong doubt such a vote would go Bach's way. Not even Samaranch could get a lot of his proposals through, and Bach, as much as he might think he is, isn't yet a Samaranch in terms of his hold on power or sway.

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On 2/19/2017 at 2:23 PM, Sir Rols said:

I thought the same. What was Krow's famous quote about their costs? "Their budget was five Euros and a handful of groupons". To be fair, I do seem to remember their bid plan was indeed heavily laden with existing venues, many quite new. I'd forgotten that old conundrum they were putting though - "our games will be super cheap, we don't have anything to build, but we need them to create thousands of jobs and stimulate our economy".

Actually I think they ran with a bid that regardless of what happens, those venues were still going to be built, with the exception of the temporary venues.

The athletics and ceremonies stadium was going to be an existing stadium that was already planned to be renovated as a football/soccer stadium, but would have been converted for the Olympics first then later as a permanent football stadium. 

By the time 2032 comes around, the new venues that were built with 2020 in mind may have to be renovated if the IOC decides to revise its requirements for venues, or may have be replaced completely.

Also that option of converting La Peineta into an athletics stadium will no longer exist because it is now going to be reconstructed as a football only stadium. It's scheduled to open this year. All while Tokyo's stadium has a ways to go lol

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8 hours ago, Sir Rols said:

The others are from China, Taiwan and Heiberg from Norway (I don't know where Roger87 got Azerbaijan from), all Executive Board members or very influential in the IOC. I don't think you can dismiss them as having something to lose, or negative nancies. 

 

 

 

8 hours ago, Sir Rols said:

Well, actually, they're the only two mentioned that might stand to lose out (and at this stage, I haven't seen Turkey mentioned in any lists of likewise or hopefuls for bidding 2028). The others are from China, Taiwan and Heiberg from Norway (I don't know where Roger87 got Azerbaijan from), all Executive Board members or very influential in the IOC. I don't think you can dismiss them as having something to lose, or negative nancies. 

I didn't say that I dismiss them as negative nancies, but rather hold what they have to say with a bit more reservation. Especially when you have someone like Pound (a senior Canadian member himself [where Canada could actually be at play for 2028] who tells it like it is a lot of the time & that's what many like about him), saying that it could work, (& while it's not anywhere listed or mentioned that Istanbul may bid at this time, doesn't mean that a bid from them could not be in the works. How many times have we seen "surprise bids" at the very last minute & see them right on applicant deadline day. And Istanbul pledged at one time to keep bidding until it was successful).

And I'm actually surprised about Heiberg. I mean after his very own Norway told them to go f@ck themselves, I would've thought that he'd be one of the first to realize that there's a VERY serious problem in front of them. Sounds to me that all of this is nothing but usual IOC politicking, instead of trying to work together for a solution, albeit, even if it's a "short-term" one. But it's not like any of the others are coming up with anything better other than some resistance to Bach.

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