Posted on 07/30/2016 5:35:10 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
I am, however, an Olymposceptic. I always opposed holding them in London, and never wavered even during the 17 days four summers ago when even my staunchest allies faltered. I felt like the man in trunks on a nudist beach; the unbeliever at a mass Moonie wedding. Late one night I bared my soul to a kindly colleague who had spent seven years covering every detail of the build-up. “I drank the Kool-Aid,” he admitted. “It was the only way to cope.”... Zimbalist cites 19 different reports from 2002 onwards showing that Olympic and World Cup hosts derived minimal or negative benefits in employment, tourism and general growth. The empty hotel room has become as much a symbol of the Olympics as the five rings. Mostly, as in London, this reality is tucked away under layers of propaganda, although the locus classicus remains Montreal 1976. “The Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby,” swanked Mayor Jean Drapeau. That baby was 30 years old before the city paid off the debt.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
The trouble is that it got so hopelessly corrupted by governments and drugs and all sorts of other related nonsense. I can remember reading in his book “The Trouble with Canada”, author William Gairdner talking about how athletes today will never ever experience what real amateur and Olympic competition was about in his days as an athlete.
The state apparently barely raised it’s head in when he competed in 1964 for Canada, yet you can just imagine what went on in the ensuing years with both the West and more so the East Bloc countries and China and certainly continues nowadays.
I have often wondered why I lost interest, and it is a puzzle to me. I think perhaps as another poster stated, they began spending more time on the stories and less time on the sports.
Agreed. I can remember noticing that in particular the media really seems to have a thing for the women gymnasts such as Mary Lou Retton in 1984 and Kerri Strug in 1996. Basically making them into these big stars.
If “big sports” went away tomorrow, I would be just fine.
At the very top of “the Movement” sits the International Olympic Committee, a nonprofit run by a “volunteer” president who gets an annual “allowance” of $251,000 and lives rent-free in a five-star hotel and spa in Switzerland.
USA Swimming Executive Director Chuck Wielgus makes $854,000, and national swim team director Frank Busch makes $346,000; their swimmers competing in Rio next month can make monthly stipends that cap at $42,000 per year. USA Triathlon CEO Rob Urbach makes $362,000 while Team USA triathletes compete for stipends that range from about $20,000 to $40,000 a year. The coach of the USA Rowing women’s team makes $237,000 while his rowers vie for stipends that max out at about $20,000 per year. (U.S. Olympic athletes are given an additional stipend if they win a gold, silver or bronze medal.)...
The IOC and dozens of international sports federations are headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland — also known as “the Olympic capital” — a city that offers beautiful mountain vistas in a country that has legally enshrined financial privacy protections.
Unlike in the States, nonprofits in Switzerland are not legally required to publicly disclose information about how they spend their money.
When on IOC business, members fly first-class, stay in luxury hotels, and also get cash per diems: $450 per day for regular IOC members, $900 per day for the IOC’s executive committee.
I think that would be good too. Give it to Greece, they invented it anyway.
Yeah but not Athens. They should buy one or more of the islands in the Aegean and make them permanent Olympic states. Not sure if Greece would agree to that but if they threw enough money at them given their current state of finances who knows.
I agree. There are probably a lot more of us than are given credit for.
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