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2016 Summer Olympics


Ms. Spam
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The Olympics are sure making it difficult to support these days. I like that it shines a light on these obscure sports and athletes we only care about once every four years, turning them into international stars. I like that it gives nations a sense of pride as they find new heroes in their medalists.

 

It hurts how much they've been taken over by massive amounts of wasteful spending for the egos of government elites and steroids. But, yeah, knowing that Brazil is being fleeced and that countries who can't afford it, or who will spend tons just for the egos of their leaders like in Russia or Greece, dampens the very spirit of the games.

 

And then you toss Zika in on top, and just about any athlete who has an outside income is skipping without a second thought. All around it's a perfect storm of bad situations coming off London's fairly respectable showing.

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The Australians have had the worst luck. They get to their building where they're staying and a fire breaks out but the fire alarm and sprinklers are off and to top it off when they evacuate someone goes in and steals money and a laptop.

 

Also five more days until either the biggest disaster or fun Olympics happens.

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Yeah, that's why I can't figure out why LA would want it. Do you want to bring the city to the brink of disaster and not have it be done by a earthquake?

 

But I still love the Olympics. Men's swim team, men's bicycling, men's gymnastics... I think you see where this is going.

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I'm a big fan of the Olympics. I think it's one of the last few opportunities for real collaborative diplomacy between nations and gives the world something amazingly positive to share for a few weeks. The sports aspect of it is almost secondary.

Even so, I'm really dreading the Rio games. The IOC looks so tonedeaf and oblivious in retrospect for having awarded it to a place that was so ill prepared to host it. (Especially when either Tokyo or Chicago would have clearly been a better home to it.) A place full of health risks, drug lords, and dead bodies washing up on the beach is not an ideal place for such a premier event. The 2012 London games were so perfect and went off beautifully, this is going to look awful in comparison.

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When you give the Olympics to a third world country, you're going to get third world results.

 

It made sense at the time. There's never been a South American Olympics and "it was time". Brazil is the biggest country of its continent and Rio it's centerpiece of tourism and culture. Rio would gain experience in coordinating big events after they hosted the World Cup.

 

Unfortunately, the country's hit a bad patch since being awarded the games and now all their dirty laundry is exposed to the world.

 

I rather think the Olympic selection committees should just select a rotating group of five stable countries that won't turn the Games into a dick measuring contest (sorry China and Russia, you're out) to host the games in perpetuity. No more fake towns or a hundred millions blown on the opening ceremonies. I like the theory behind letting multiple cultures get a chance to have their coming out parties for the Olympics, but the reality is that they've become a white elephant where most prudent cities wouldn't dream of even wanting the Olympics.

 

At the very least, cost controls should start figuring into deciding who gets the games. No more Olympics built for the egos of government.

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It may have "made sense," but it was always a wholly risky proposition. Plenty of articles from the time highlighted that, it certainly isn't just a rough patch arising after they were awarded (possibly misleading source: my memory, living in Chicago, saw a lot of social media posts about it).

 

The Olympics are basically terrible from a cost/benefit standpoint. I'm sure even in the United States that would be the case, we'd just be able to more easily absorb it.

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I remember when NY bidded for the games a while back, thank God they didn't get it.

 

As for Rio getting experience from the World Cup, its just a totally different thing. The WC has maybe 700 athletes participating, thats nothing compared to an Olympics. Plus the WC is contested across the entire nation, not just in Rio. Plus Brazil already had all the soccer stadiums they needed for the WC, whereas in the Olympics they had to build many venues for events that aren't normally held in Brazil.

 

The Olympics need to be scaled down majorly. There are so many stupid events, look at the modern pentathlon? It's 5 things that have nothing to do with each other: fencing, swimming, horse jumping, shooting and a cross country run? What moron decided to put those 5 things together and make it an Olympic event? I mean it's like me saying "hey Im inventing the ultra modern septathlon! it's going to have free throw shooting, the pommel horse, rowing crew, archery, corn hole, a HR derby and a half marathon!!" It's just stupid, it shouldn't be in the Olympics.

 

The Olympics should be basically track and field, swimming and gymnastics. Plus they should bring back the tug of war and have every nation on earth compete in it. Bam thats the Olympics.

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Plus Brazil already had all the soccer stadiums they needed for the WC, whereas in the Olympics they had to build many venues for events that aren't normally held in Brazil.

 

Actually, they built seven new stadium just for the World Cup (and renovated several more). Because of those stadiums, the budget was actually higher for the World Cup than it will be for the Olympics. Some of those stadiums were pretty much out in the middle of nowhere and have already fallen into disuse or are draining cities just to keep up maintenance on these brand new facilities.

 

You're right about the Olympics being much more difficult from a logistical standpoint.

 

 

 

The Olympics are basically terrible from a cost/benefit standpoint. I'm sure even in the United States that would be the case, we'd just be able to more easily absorb it.

 

Cost controls in the United States tend to be relatively reasonable. Even the troubled Salt Lake City games managed to pull a profit in the end (thank-you Mitt Romney). It's an advantage of a federal system of government. It's largely up to the city and states to pay for these things. While a more centralized government might find it acceptable to pay ridiculous sums for the Olympics, there's just no way that any city's government scrape together, much less get away with, spending $50 billion on the Olympics like Russia or China did. Put simply, any city that voted to allow such lavish spending on a pageantry would find their city council replaced the next election cycle and would immediately renege.

 

If Los Angeles hosted another Olympics, I'd surmise that they could do it on a reasonable enough budget thanks to already having most of the infrastructure in place and they'd probably make a tidy profit like they did in 1984 when they were the first city to turn a profit (almost a quarter billion dollars) from a Summer Olympics in over half a century.

 

 

 

The Olympics need to be scaled down majorly. There are so many stupid events, look at the modern pentathlon?

 

The problem isn't the number of sports really. For the most part, adding a few low-level sports is relatively cheap. They don't exactly spend hundreds of millions on the handball arena. In fact, the handball arena is a temporary structure that they're going to recycle into new schools. It's everything that goes on around them that drives up the cost.

 

Besides, the modern pentathlon's one of the oldest sports in the Olympics.

 

 

 

What moron decided to put those 5 things together and make it an Olympic event?

 

Believe it or not, two people claim credit. Obviously one is lying, because, as you said, who the heck would put those 5 sports together?

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Was it 7 new Stadiums? Maybe it was, not sure. However some of those Stadiums ended up being used by professional soccer teams in Brazil after the World Cup. There were a couple that were seemingly built for the WC without any real purpose afterwards.

 

My main point though is that the WC is hosted by a nation, not a city. The cost and crush of people is completely different.

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I don't understand why they didn't fix that stupid rule that says that one country can only send two athletes to the women's gymnastics all-around after Wieber came in 4th in the preliminaries of 2012, but wasn't allowed to compete in the finals. Having a bad rule on the books is forgivable as long as it's fixed.

 

But here we are, four years later, and Gabby Douglas puts in a performance good enough to win a bronze in the preliminaries, but it's not enough to even be allowed to compete in the finals. They're going to have 20+ athletes in that competition that didn't do as well as her. Not to mention Laurie Hernandez not even being allowed to attempt to make the finals because of a coach's decision to have a ringer on one apparatus take her spot. It'd be easy enough to allow a 5th competitor to do a routine that wouldn't be counted towards the team preliminary score, but would keep their individual eligibility intact.

 

There is no logic to it at all.

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