JOIN USShould Tokyo 2020 be the last ever Summer Olympics?
In early 2015, Boston, Massachusetts, was the frontrunner to host the 2024 edition of the Summer Olympics. But resistance towards the Games amplified once the locals learnt that Boston’s taxpayers would have to foot the bill should expenditures for the event exceed initial projections. Boston promptly terminated its bid and emulated Denver, Colorado (from 1972) by sidestepping the world’s biggest sporting competition.
Increasingly, more and more host cities of the Olympics may be wishing that they had followed Boston’s lead and avoided any involvement in an extravaganza whose appeal and relevance are becoming inversely proportional to its costs.
An unscalable mountain
Circus Maximus by Andrew Zimbalist proves that the 1992 Games in Barcelona are the only time that the modern Olympics have bolstered a host city’s economic growth, employment, and tourist income. Research conducted by Oxford University has found that every Olympics since 1960 has overspent by an average of 172 per cent in real terms.
The logistical setup that needs to be in place to organise the Games does not only involve building or renovating sporting facilities. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) insists that host cities spend millions (sometimes billions) revamping everything from hotels to roads to public transport.
The unscalable mountain that the IOC entrusts cities to climb often comes with the additional baggage of human displacement. Seoul 1988 and Beijing 2008 saw almost two million people uprooted. In 2016, Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro could not have gone ahead with the Games without forcing close to 60,000 people out of their homes and businesses.
A lopsided sporting ecosystem
Sports that are extremely popular outside the Olympics framework have reduced the Games to a sideshow. Football, especially the men’s teams, only manage to send second-rate senior players to accompany essentially under-23 contingents. Tennis stars would rather have a longer gap between Wimbledon and the US Open than hopping off in search of a medal that adds little to their legacy. Just ask Andy Murray, who has won two singles gold medals. Roger Federer, meanwhile, has none.
The planet’s greatest boxer, Floyd Mayweather Jr, has not competed at the Olympics since 1996, as the IOC only allows amateur boxers to participate. As for cricket, its much-anticipated return to the Games has not materialised in 121 years.
On the flip side, a common argument is that for sports with far less clout, such as archery, weightlifting, swimming, or wrestling (to name a few), the Olympics offer athletes an opportunity of a lifetime. On probing deeper, it becomes clear that what the Olympics actually do for such athletes (read just the winners) is give them their proverbial fifteen minutes of fame before they slip into relative anonymity for another four years.
The overbearing focus on the Olympics undermines the importance of standalone championships, holding back the structural changes necessary to make several sports more accessible and glamorous outside the Olympics umbrella.
Stellar performances at the Olympics rarely create sustained interest in a sport that already relies too much on the Games for traction. For instance, how many Indians started following shooting tournaments after Abhinav Bindra’s gold medal in 2008? How many fans currently singing the praises of Mirabai Chanu will be bothered to watch the next Weightlifting World Championships?
The bottomline is that the Olympics have perpetuated a lopsided ecosystem wherein some sports barely need the Games, whereas others cannot do without it.
An outdated concept
It is safe to say that columns like these will not persuade the IOC to put an end to the Olympic Games. In all likelihood, the next edition of the Summer Olympics will proceed as planned in Paris, to be succeeded by the return of the Games to Hollywood in 2028.
This, however, does not take away from the failure of the Olympics to evolve on multiple fronts, not least when it comes to their audience. In the age of dwindling attention spans and chock-a-block work schedules, it is impractical to expect viewers to tune in for hours over a fortnight and invest in a plethora of narratives and athletes, most of whom they are unlikely to hear about before the next Games.
A far more practical solution would be to abolish the Summer Games (perhaps its Winter cousin, too, for that inspires even less interest) and divert resources towards strengthening the individual foundations of sports lagging on the international stage. Until such a miracle happens, we are stuck with a quadrennial phenomenon that will be milked by the IOC, governments, and corporations alike, one that will continue to produce more misery than medals.
(The writer is a freelance journalist writing on politics, culture and sport)