That left the I.O.C. with two less-than-ideal choices: Beijing, which hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics in an atmosphere rife with pollution and accusations of human rights violations; and Almaty, Kazakhstan, which has a poor report card on human rights, too. Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story What it revealed was that few countries want to host a Winter Games. (The Summer Games retain plenty of suitors.) That should not come as a surprise. Even Russia’s costly investment in Sochi didn’t guarantee a legacy, not a positive one, at least. In other Olympic cities, many venues, including the Olympic Stadiums in Athens and Beijing, are now massive white elephants, a good number of them abandoned and crumbling. So what good is it to have billions of dollars coming in from broadcast rights when nobody wants to host your party? For so many years, the I.O.C. thought its demands and its unduly strict rules would never be challenged, and that was a huge mistake. But here comes Bach, and perhaps the outlook for the Olympic movement isn’t looking so bleak. If his 40 proposals to revamp the Olympics pass at the I.O.C. session in Monaco next month, maybe the 2030 Olympics won’t have to be held at the North Pole after all.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 14:33:08 +0000
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