Author: Jonathan Bailey (United Kingdom)
Jonathan Bailey is a management consultant. He read History at the University of Oxford from 2003 to 2006 during which time he reached the finals of both the World Universities’ Debating Championships (2005) and the European Universities’ Debating Championships (2004). He also won the UCL President’s Cup, City IV and Stanford IV. He was also the Chair of the Debates Selection Committee of the Oxford Union Society and toured Japan on the 2005 ESU British Debate Squad. He represented England at the 2003 World Schools’ Debating Competition in Peru where he reached the semi-finals. Created: Tuesday, November 30, 1999
For 17 days every four years the Summer Olympics attract the world’s attention and the host city gets immense media coverage. Yet many argue that the huge cost of hosting the Olympic games means that cities are left with crippling bills and empty stadia once those 17 days are over. Montreal, the host in 1976, is still paying off the cost of staging the games today and the Athens Olympics of 2004 ran billions of euros over the original budget - at state expense. The scandal surrounding the bidding process for the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Games revealed that 13 of the 124 International Olympic Committee (IOC) members who were tasked with deciding who should be awarded the games were ‘bought’ with gifts and bribes. Since then the IOC has tightened up its regulations but rumours of corruption amongst some members remain and were revealed by a BBC sting operation in 2004. Whilst proponents of hosting the games generally accept that they will inevitably cost significant amounts of money, they argue that the ‘feel good factor’ and longer term benefits justify this outlay.
Do we need the Olympics any more? Even as the world erupts into a self-congratulatory orgy of sport, the reams and reams of newsprint and the hours of airtime devoted to the Olympic Games are beginning to jar. In this age of uber-popular stadia sport, the Olympics hold little, if any, relevance. And as a celebration of the human spirit, the less said the better.
Consider football, which is probably the single-most popular sport in the world. For most soccer fans, the Olympic gold medal is a nice, if irrelevant, sidetrophy. The real Holy Grail is winning the World Cup, and that sporting spectacle is something the Olympics have a hard time matching. Even tennis has tournaments in which victory would be prized much higher than getting a medal. This year, Australian Lleyton Hewitt has gone on record saying that the Olympics are hardly a do-or-die tournament for top players. One player disagreed with him. Unsurprisingly, the Olympics were the highlight of her career and are likely to remain as such. Indeed, one need not even be in the top 10 to produce a good result at the Olympics.
Cricket, passionately followed by well over a billion people, has no place in an Olympic schedule that considers synchronised swimming to be an actual sport. Golf, a sport whose popularity is increasing all the time, is also a pariah for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Nor does the IOC consider Formula 1, a sport second only to football in television audience numbers, worthy of a spot on the Olympic agenda.
Disciplines like athletics, swimming and gymnastics, which occupy centre stage at the Olympics, are so tainted in the public imagination by various drug scandals that a gold medal hardly matters any more. People automatically put an asterisk next to the medal winners’ names, unwilling to trust the results until dope tests a few months down the line have proven that those athletes didn’t take any performance-enhancing substances.
Even Jacques Rogge, redoubtable president of the IOC, has admitted that there could be as many as 30-40 positive dope tests this year. Heck, even if the athletes got a clean chit, there would still be doubt in people’s minds. The pace of development of illicit substances has been known to outstrip testing methods before. With the prevalence of drugs in sport being at an all-time high, a gold or any other medal means little except that the athlete who won had better drugs than his competitors.
And what about the hoopla over the Games being a celebration of the human spirit, of providing a forum for nations to come together in peace and friendship? The IOC, by choosing to let China host the Games, has undermined any humanist traditions that the Olympics might have had. China’s brutal suppression of dissent, both within its borders and in Tibet, means that the Beijing Games will forever be remembered more for the politics surrounding it than the actual sporting spectacle. We all know now how the Chinese fudged the opening ceremony. It seems that all that the IOC cares about is making money. Any talk of human rights and peace and all those other nice, fuzzy ideas are just sugarcoating.
As for the hosts, they may yet find themselves left with expensive white elephants once the Games are over. Not since the Los Angeles Games in 1984 has any edition of the Olympics turned a profit. China has spent something like a mammoth $40 billion till date — and that’s the official estimate — in getting everything just right for its coming out party. And there is little chance that China will recoup all of that money, let alone make any.
The Olympics benefit nobody. As a forum for sportspeople from all nations to compete without political pressure, they’re a dismal failure. Fair play at the Games is a pipe dream. The IOC should vote itself out of existence and this ridiculous extravaganza should be done away with once and for all. It’s time to abolish the Olympic Games. They’ve run their course.
I am really just testing to see if this works so I can use it with my students in class! But I do thing it is a little ridiculous how much debt certain cities and countries get into from hosting ONE Olympic Games. Is it true that Montreal is still paying debts on their 1976 games? That's nuts
For 17 days every four years the Summer Olympics attract the world’s attention and the host city gets immense media coverage. Yet many argue that the huge cost of hosting the Olympic games means that cities are left with crippling bills and empty stadia once those 17 days are over. Montreal, the host in 1976, is still paying off the cost of staging the games today and the Athens Olympics of 2004 ran billions of euros over the original budget - at state expense. The scandal surrounding the bidding process for the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Games revealed that 13 of the 124 International Olympic Committee (IOC) members who were tasked with deciding who should be awarded the games were ‘bought’ with gifts and bribes. Since then the IOC has tightened up its regulations but rumours of corruption amongst some members remain and were revealed by a BBC sting operation in 2004. Whilst proponents of hosting the games generally accept that they will inevitably cost significant amounts of money, they argue that the ‘feel good factor’ and longer term benefits justify this outlay.
Do we need the Olympics any more? Even as the world erupts into a self-congratulatory orgy of sport, the reams and reams of newsprint and the hours of airtime devoted to the Olympic Games are beginning to jar. In this age of uber-popular stadia sport, the Olympics hold little, if any, relevance. And as a celebration of the human spirit, the less said the better.
Consider football, which is probably the single-most popular sport in the world. For most soccer fans, the Olympic gold medal is a nice, if irrelevant, sidetrophy. The real Holy Grail is winning the World Cup, and that sporting spectacle is something the Olympics have a hard time matching. Even tennis has tournaments in which victory would be prized much higher than getting a medal. This year, Australian Lleyton Hewitt has gone on record saying that the Olympics are hardly a do-or-die tournament for top players. One player disagreed with him. Unsurprisingly, the Olympics were the highlight of her career and are likely to remain as such. Indeed, one need not even be in the top 10 to produce a good result at the Olympics.
Cricket, passionately followed by well over a billion people, has no place in an Olympic schedule that considers synchronised swimming to be an actual sport. Golf, a sport whose popularity is increasing all the time, is also a pariah for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Nor does the IOC consider Formula 1, a sport second only to football in television audience numbers, worthy of a spot on the Olympic agenda.
Disciplines like athletics, swimming and gymnastics, which occupy centre stage at the Olympics, are so tainted in the public imagination by various drug scandals that a gold medal hardly matters any more. People automatically put an asterisk next to the medal winners’ names, unwilling to trust the results until dope tests a few months down the line have proven that those athletes didn’t take any performance-enhancing substances.
Even Jacques Rogge, redoubtable president of the IOC, has admitted that there could be as many as 30-40 positive dope tests this year. Heck, even if the athletes got a clean chit, there would still be doubt in people’s minds. The pace of development of illicit substances has been known to outstrip testing methods before. With the prevalence of drugs in sport being at an all-time high, a gold or any other medal means little except that the athlete who won had better drugs than his competitors.
And what about the hoopla over the Games being a celebration of the human spirit, of providing a forum for nations to come together in peace and friendship? The IOC, by choosing to let China host the Games, has undermined any humanist traditions that the Olympics might have had. China’s brutal suppression of dissent, both within its borders and in Tibet, means that the Beijing Games will forever be remembered more for the politics surrounding it than the actual sporting spectacle. We all know now how the Chinese fudged the opening ceremony. It seems that all that the IOC cares about is making money. Any talk of human rights and peace and all those other nice, fuzzy ideas are just sugarcoating.
As for the hosts, they may yet find themselves left with expensive white elephants once the Games are over. Not since the Los Angeles Games in 1984 has any edition of the Olympics turned a profit. China has spent something like a mammoth $40 billion till date — and that’s the official estimate — in getting everything just right for its coming out party. And there is little chance that China will recoup all of that money, let alone make any.
The Olympics benefit nobody. As a forum for sportspeople from all nations to compete without political pressure, they’re a dismal failure. Fair play at the Games is a pipe dream. The IOC should vote itself out of existence and this ridiculous extravaganza should be done away with once and for all. It’s time to abolish the Olympic Games. They’ve run their course.
Do we need the Olympics any more? Even as the world erupts into a self-congratulatory orgy of sport, the reams and reams of newsprint and the hours of airtime devoted to the Olympic Games are beginning to jar. In this age of uber-popular stadia sport, the Olympics hold little, if any, relevance. And as a celebration of the human spirit, the less said the better.
Consider football, which is probably the single-most popular sport in the world. For most soccer fans, the Olympic gold medal is a nice, if irrelevant, sidetrophy. The real Holy Grail is winning the World Cup, and that sporting spectacle is something the Olympics have a hard time matching. Even tennis has tournaments in which victory would be prized much higher than getting a medal. This year, Australian Lleyton Hewitt has gone on record saying that the Olympics are hardly a do-or-die tournament for top players. One player disagreed with him. Unsurprisingly, the Olympics were the highlight of her career and are likely to remain as such. Indeed, one need not even be in the top 10 to produce a good result at the Olympics.
Cricket, passionately followed by well over a billion people, has no place in an Olympic schedule that considers synchronised swimming to be an actual sport. Golf, a sport whose popularity is increasing all the time, is also a pariah for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Nor does the IOC consider Formula 1, a sport second only to football in television audience numbers, worthy of a spot on the Olympic agenda.
Disciplines like athletics, swimming and gymnastics, which occupy centre stage at the Olympics, are so tainted in the public imagination by various drug scandals that a gold medal hardly matters any more. People automatically put an asterisk next to the medal winners’ names, unwilling to trust the results until dope tests a few months down the line have proven that those athletes didn’t take any performance-enhancing substances.
Even Jacques Rogge, redoubtable president of the IOC, has admitted that there could be as many as 30-40 positive dope tests this year. Heck, even if the athletes got a clean chit, there would still be doubt in people’s minds. The pace of development of illicit substances has been known to outstrip testing methods before. With the prevalence of drugs in sport being at an all-time high, a gold or any other medal means little except that the athlete who won had better drugs than his competitors.
And what about the hoopla over the Games being a celebration of the human spirit, of providing a forum for nations to come together in peace and friendship? The IOC, by choosing to let China host the Games, has undermined any humanist traditions that the Olympics might have had. China’s brutal suppression of dissent, both within its borders and in Tibet, means that the Beijing Games will forever be remembered more for the politics surrounding it than the actual sporting spectacle. We all know now how the Chinese fudged the opening ceremony. It seems that all that the IOC cares about is making money. Any talk of human rights and peace and all those other nice, fuzzy ideas are just sugarcoating.
As for the hosts, they may yet find themselves left with expensive white elephants once the Games are over. Not since the Los Angeles Games in 1984 has any edition of the Olympics turned a profit. China has spent something like a mammoth $40 billion till date — and that’s the official estimate — in getting everything just right for its coming out party. And there is little chance that China will recoup all of that money, let alone make any.
The Olympics benefit nobody. As a forum for sportspeople from all nations to compete without political pressure, they’re a dismal failure. Fair play at the Games is a pipe dream. The IOC should vote itself out of existence and this ridiculous extravaganza should be done away with once and for all. It’s time to abolish the Olympic Games. They’ve run their course.
Do we need the Olympics any more? Even as the world erupts into a self-congratulatory orgy of sport, the reams and reams of newsprint and the hours of airtime devoted to the Olympic Games are beginning to jar. In this age of uber-popular stadia sport, the Olympics hold little, if any, relevance. And as a celebration of the human spirit, the less said the better.
Consider football, which is probably the single-most popular sport in the world. For most soccer fans, the Olympic gold medal is a nice, if irrelevant, sidetrophy. The real Holy Grail is winning the World Cup, and that sporting spectacle is something the Olympics have a hard time matching. Even tennis has tournaments in which victory would be prized much higher than getting a medal. This year, Australian Lleyton Hewitt has gone on record saying that the Olympics are hardly a do-or-die tournament for top players. One player disagreed with him. Unsurprisingly, the Olympics were the highlight of her career and are likely to remain as such. Indeed, one need not even be in the top 10 to produce a good result at the Olympics.
Cricket, passionately followed by well over a billion people, has no place in an Olympic schedule that considers synchronised swimming to be an actual sport. Golf, a sport whose popularity is increasing all the time, is also a pariah for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Nor does the IOC consider Formula 1, a sport second only to football in television audience numbers, worthy of a spot on the Olympic agenda.
Disciplines like athletics, swimming and gymnastics, which occupy centre stage at the Olympics, are so tainted in the public imagination by various drug scandals that a gold medal hardly matters any more. People automatically put an asterisk next to the medal winners’ names, unwilling to trust the results until dope tests a few months down the line have proven that those athletes didn’t take any performance-enhancing substances.
Even Jacques Rogge, redoubtable president of the IOC, has admitted that there could be as many as 30-40 positive dope tests this year. Heck, even if the athletes got a clean chit, there would still be doubt in people’s minds. The pace of development of illicit substances has been known to outstrip testing methods before. With the prevalence of drugs in sport being at an all-time high, a gold or any other medal means little except that the athlete who won had better drugs than his competitors.
And what about the hoopla over the Games being a celebration of the human spirit, of providing a forum for nations to come together in peace and friendship? The IOC, by choosing to let China host the Games, has undermined any humanist traditions that the Olympics might have had. China’s brutal suppression of dissent, both within its borders and in Tibet, means that the Beijing Games will forever be remembered more for the politics surrounding it than the actual sporting spectacle. We all know now how the Chinese fudged the opening ceremony. It seems that all that the IOC cares about is making money. Any talk of human rights and peace and all those other nice, fuzzy ideas are just sugarcoating.
As for the hosts, they may yet find themselves left with expensive white elephants once the Games are over. Not since the Los Angeles Games in 1984 has any edition of the Olympics turned a profit. China has spent something like a mammoth $40 billion till date — and that’s the official estimate — in getting everything just right for its coming out party. And there is little chance that China will recoup all of that money, let alone make any.
The Olympics benefit nobody. As a forum for sportspeople from all nations to compete without political pressure, they’re a dismal failure. Fair play at the Games is a pipe dream. The IOC should vote itself out of existence and this ridiculous extravaganza should be done away with once and for all. It’s time to abolish the Olympic Games. They’ve run their course.
Do we need the Olympics any more? Even as the world erupts into a self-congratulatory orgy of sport, the reams and reams of newsprint and the hours of airtime devoted to the Olympic Games are beginning to jar. In this age of uber-popular stadia sport, the Olympics hold little, if any, relevance. And as a celebration of the human spirit, the less said the better.
Consider football, which is probably the single-most popular sport in the world. For most soccer fans, the Olympic gold medal is a nice, if irrelevant, sidetrophy. The real Holy Grail is winning the World Cup, and that sporting spectacle is something the Olympics have a hard time matching. Even tennis has tournaments in which victory would be prized much higher than getting a medal. This year, Australian Lleyton Hewitt has gone on record saying that the Olympics are hardly a do-or-die tournament for top players. One player disagreed with him. Unsurprisingly, the Olympics were the highlight of her career and are likely to remain as such. Indeed, one need not even be in the top 10 to produce a good result at the Olympics.
Cricket, passionately followed by well over a billion people, has no place in an Olympic schedule that considers synchronised swimming to be an actual sport. Golf, a sport whose popularity is increasing all the time, is also a pariah for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Nor does the IOC consider Formula 1, a sport second only to football in television audience numbers, worthy of a spot on the Olympic agenda.
Disciplines like athletics, swimming and gymnastics, which occupy centre stage at the Olympics, are so tainted in the public imagination by various drug scandals that a gold medal hardly matters any more. People automatically put an asterisk next to the medal winners’ names, unwilling to trust the results until dope tests a few months down the line have proven that those athletes didn’t take any performance-enhancing substances.
Even Jacques Rogge, redoubtable president of the IOC, has admitted that there could be as many as 30-40 positive dope tests this year. Heck, even if the athletes got a clean chit, there would still be doubt in people’s minds. The pace of development of illicit substances has been known to outstrip testing methods before. With the prevalence of drugs in sport being at an all-time high, a gold or any other medal means little except that the athlete who won had better drugs than his competitors.
And what about the hoopla over the Games being a celebration of the human spirit, of providing a forum for nations to come together in peace and friendship? The IOC, by choosing to let China host the Games, has undermined any humanist traditions that the Olympics might have had. China’s brutal suppression of dissent, both within its borders and in Tibet, means that the Beijing Games will forever be remembered more for the politics surrounding it than the actual sporting spectacle. We all know now how the Chinese fudged the opening ceremony. It seems that all that the IOC cares about is making money. Any talk of human rights and peace and all those other nice, fuzzy ideas are just sugarcoating.
As for the hosts, they may yet find themselves left with expensive white elephants once the Games are over. Not since the Los Angeles Games in 1984 has any edition of the Olympics turned a profit. China has spent something like a mammoth $40 billion till date — and that’s the official estimate — in getting everything just right for its coming out party. And there is little chance that China will recoup all of that money, let alone make any.
The Olympics benefit nobody. As a forum for sportspeople from all nations to compete without political pressure, they’re a dismal failure. Fair play at the Games is a pipe dream. The IOC should vote itself out of existence and this ridiculous extravaganza should be done away with once and for all. It’s time to abolish the Olympic Games. They’ve run their course.
Do we need the Olympics any more? Even as the world erupts into a self-congratulatory orgy of sport, the reams and reams of newsprint and the hours of airtime devoted to the Olympic Games are beginning to jar. In this age of uber-popular stadia sport, the Olympics hold little, if any, relevance. And as a celebration of the human spirit, the less said the better.
Consider football, which is probably the single-most popular sport in the world. For most soccer fans, the Olympic gold medal is a nice, if irrelevant, sidetrophy. The real Holy Grail is winning the World Cup, and that sporting spectacle is something the Olympics have a hard time matching. Even tennis has tournaments in which victory would be prized much higher than getting a medal. This year, Australian Lleyton Hewitt has gone on record saying that the Olympics are hardly a do-or-die tournament for top players. One player disagreed with him. Unsurprisingly, the Olympics were the highlight of her career and are likely to remain as such. Indeed, one need not even be in the top 10 to produce a good result at the Olympics.
Cricket, passionately followed by well over a billion people, has no place in an Olympic schedule that considers synchronised swimming to be an actual sport. Golf, a sport whose popularity is increasing all the time, is also a pariah for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Nor does the IOC consider Formula 1, a sport second only to football in television audience numbers, worthy of a spot on the Olympic agenda.
Disciplines like athletics, swimming and gymnastics, which occupy centre stage at the Olympics, are so tainted in the public imagination by various drug scandals that a gold medal hardly matters any more. People automatically put an asterisk next to the medal winners’ names, unwilling to trust the results until dope tests a few months down the line have proven that those athletes didn’t take any performance-enhancing substances.
Even Jacques Rogge, redoubtable president of the IOC, has admitted that there could be as many as 30-40 positive dope tests this year. Heck, even if the athletes got a clean chit, there would still be doubt in people’s minds. The pace of development of illicit substances has been known to outstrip testing methods before. With the prevalence of drugs in sport being at an all-time high, a gold or any other medal means little except that the athlete who won had better drugs than his competitors.
And what about the hoopla over the Games being a celebration of the human spirit, of providing a forum for nations to come together in peace and friendship? The IOC, by choosing to let China host the Games, has undermined any humanist traditions that the Olympics might have had. China’s brutal suppression of dissent, both within its borders and in Tibet, means that the Beijing Games will forever be remembered more for the politics surrounding it than the actual sporting spectacle. We all know now how the Chinese fudged the opening ceremony. It seems that all that the IOC cares about is making money. Any talk of human rights and peace and all those other nice, fuzzy ideas are just sugarcoating.
As for the hosts, they may yet find themselves left with expensive white elephants once the Games are over. Not since the Los Angeles Games in 1984 has any edition of the Olympics turned a profit. China has spent something like a mammoth $40 billion till date — and that’s the official estimate — in getting everything just right for its coming out party. And there is little chance that China will recoup all of that money, let alone make any.
The Olympics benefit nobody. As a forum for sportspeople from all nations to compete without political pressure, they’re a dismal failure. Fair play at the Games is a pipe dream. The IOC should vote itself out of existence and this ridiculous extravaganza should be done away with once and for all. It’s time to abolish the Olympic Games. They’ve run their course.
Do we need the Olympics any more? Even as the world erupts into a self-congratulatory orgy of sport, the reams and reams of newsprint and the hours of airtime devoted to the Olympic Games are beginning to jar. In this age of uber-popular stadia sport, the Olympics hold little, if any, relevance. And as a celebration of the human spirit, the less said the better.
Consider football, which is probably the single-most popular sport in the world. For most soccer fans, the Olympic gold medal is a nice, if irrelevant, sidetrophy. The real Holy Grail is winning the World Cup, and that sporting spectacle is something the Olympics have a hard time matching. Even tennis has tournaments in which victory would be prized much higher than getting a medal. This year, Australian Lleyton Hewitt has gone on record saying that the Olympics are hardly a do-or-die tournament for top players. One player disagreed with him. Unsurprisingly, the Olympics were the highlight of her career and are likely to remain as such. Indeed, one need not even be in the top 10 to produce a good result at the Olympics.
Cricket, passionately followed by well over a billion people, has no place in an Olympic schedule that considers synchronised swimming to be an actual sport. Golf, a sport whose popularity is increasing all the time, is also a pariah for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Nor does the IOC consider Formula 1, a sport second only to football in television audience numbers, worthy of a spot on the Olympic agenda.
Disciplines like athletics, swimming and gymnastics, which occupy centre stage at the Olympics, are so tainted in the public imagination by various drug scandals that a gold medal hardly matters any more. People automatically put an asterisk next to the medal winners’ names, unwilling to trust the results until dope tests a few months down the line have proven that those athletes didn’t take any performance-enhancing substances.
Even Jacques Rogge, redoubtable president of the IOC, has admitted that there could be as many as 30-40 positive dope tests this year. Heck, even if the athletes got a clean chit, there would still be doubt in people’s minds. The pace of development of illicit substances has been known to outstrip testing methods before. With the prevalence of drugs in sport being at an all-time high, a gold or any other medal means little except that the athlete who won had better drugs than his competitors.
And what about the hoopla over the Games being a celebration of the human spirit, of providing a forum for nations to come together in peace and friendship? The IOC, by choosing to let China host the Games, has undermined any humanist traditions that the Olympics might have had. China’s brutal suppression of dissent, both within its borders and in Tibet, means that the Beijing Games will forever be remembered more for the politics surrounding it than the actual sporting spectacle. We all know now how the Chinese fudged the opening ceremony. It seems that all that the IOC cares about is making money. Any talk of human rights and peace and all those other nice, fuzzy ideas are just sugarcoating.
As for the hosts, they may yet find themselves left with expensive white elephants once the Games are over. Not since the Los Angeles Games in 1984 has any edition of the Olympics turned a profit. China has spent something like a mammoth $40 billion till date — and that’s the official estimate — in getting everything just right for its coming out party. And there is little chance that China will recoup all of that money, let alone make any.
The Olympics benefit nobody. As a forum for sportspeople from all nations to compete without political pressure, they’re a dismal failure. Fair play at the Games is a pipe dream. The IOC should vote itself out of existence and this ridiculous extravaganza should be done away with once and for all. It’s time to abolish the Olympic Games. They’ve run their course.
I am really just testing to see if this works so I can use it with my students in class! But I do thing it is a little ridiculous how much debt certain cities and countries get into from hosting ONE Olympic Games. Is it true that Montreal is still paying debts on their 1976 games? That's nuts
