Tokyo Summer Olympic Games 2020 News

[Quaker2001 251]

5 hours ago, OlympicsFan said:

Interesting article by The Ringer:

https://www.theringer.com/2021/1/22/22244941/tokyo-summer-olympics-status-thomas-bach-ioc

 

I always thought that it might make sense to rotate the Olympics between maybe 10 to 15 cities.

Summer: Moscow, Barcelona/Madrid, Rome, Paris, London, Berlin, Toronto, Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam, Sydney

Winter: Munich, Milan, Innsbruck/Salzburg, Oslo/Lillehammer, Stockholm, Helsinki, Lake Placid/Salt Lake City, Vancouver, Nagano/Sapporo, Albertville, St. Moritz/Lausanne

London had two Olympics 64 years ago.  Tokyo was 56 (now 57) years ago.  Los Angeles was 44 years.  So there's already a handful of cities that have the Olympics come around to them after awhile.  But like NearPup said, you're talking about a 40-60 year rotation.  That's not always feasible.  And the key venue that always is difficult to account for is the athletes' village.  That's not something cities have on hand ready to go.  And even the biggest cities - I say this as a life-long New Yorker - don't have all the required venues and wouldn't necessarily need certain ones.  

 

It's an interesting idea to toss around about having some sort of rotation of cities, but even with the IOC's insistence on having world class venues for the Olympics, it's probably not as smart an idea in practice as it might sound.

[OlympicsFan 858]

4 hours ago, Quaker2001 said:

London had two Olympics 64 years ago.  Tokyo was 56 (now 57) years ago.  Los Angeles was 44 years.  So there's already a handful of cities that have the Olympics come around to them after awhile.  But like NearPup said, you're talking about a 40-60 year rotation.  That's not always feasible.  And the key venue that always is difficult to account for is the athletes' village.  That's not something cities have on hand ready to go.  And even the biggest cities - I say this as a life-long New Yorker - don't have all the required venues and wouldn't necessarily need certain ones.  

 

It's an interesting idea to toss around about having some sort of rotation of cities, but even with the IOC's insistence on having world class venues for the Olympics, it's probably not as smart an idea in practice as it might sound.

Please try to state your point. Your comment is all over the place. There might be downsides to this concept, but it certainly would reduce costs, which is the main reason why less and less countries want to host the Olympics. The lack of an Olympic village is no problem in big cities, you can just use a hotel/multiple hotels or the athletes could for example live in student apartments that are usually empty during the summer anyways. In a better world countries would build a new apartment complex for the athletes and afterwards it would be used to fix homelessness in that city. 
 

I think the Olympic village, the stadium and the swimming stadium are normally the most expansive venues. You can bring down the costs of the swimming stadium by using a temporary (outdoor) pool. Every big city usually already has a large stadium for the opening ceremony/athletics and multiple indoor arenas for other sports. Maybe you will have to install a temporary track, but that still would be far less expansive than building a new stadium. You could also hold the ceremonies in the city to allow more people to watch.

 

If it is for example too expansive to build a (temporary) venue for track cycling, then track cycling should be dropped from the Olympic program. The same is true for sledding events or ski jumping at the Winter Olympics. It would be too nice to call it insanity when countries regularly build two ski jumping hills for two weeks of competition.

[JoshMartini007 2,547]

The stadium capacities are another big issue. If the IOC was willing to halve the stadium size my metro area would be able to host the Olympics with only needing to build sport specific stadiums. If they want more ticket sales they could always install viewing areas or even theaters.

[Federer91 2,810]

With half a year to go, it's only fitting to give my appreciation for the future ahead: "F**k IOC, F**k Japan and triple F**k Bach! Thank You!"  

[Orangehair43 251]

11 minutes ago, JoshMartini007 said:

The stadium capacities are another big issue. If the IOC was willing to halve the stadium size my metro area would be able to host the Olympics with only needing to build sport specific stadiums. If they want more ticket sales they could always install viewing areas or even theaters.

A lot of countries have the facilities without the capacity issues.

[JoshMartini007 2,547]

8 minutes ago, Orangehair43 said:

A lot of countries have the facilities without the capacity issues.

That's the point, the IOC is creating a situation where nations don't want to host the Olympics because of these requirements when in reality almost everyone is watching the games on a screen.

[Quaker2001 251]

7 hours ago, OlympicsFan said:

Please try to state your point. Your comment is all over the place. There might be downsides to this concept, but it certainly would reduce costs, which is the main reason why less and less countries want to host the Olympics. The lack of an Olympic village is no problem in big cities, you can just use a hotel/multiple hotels or the athletes could for example live in student apartments that are usually empty during the summer anyways. In a better world countries would build a new apartment complex for the athletes and afterwards it would be used to fix homelessness in that city. 
 

I think the Olympic village, the stadium and the swimming stadium are normally the most expansive venues. You can bring down the costs of the swimming stadium by using a temporary (outdoor) pool. Every big city usually already has a large stadium for the opening ceremony/athletics and multiple indoor arenas for other sports. Maybe you will have to install a temporary track, but that still would be far less expansive than building a new stadium. You could also hold the ceremonies in the city to allow more people to watch.

 

If it is for example too expansive to build a (temporary) venue for track cycling, then track cycling should be dropped from the Olympic program. The same is true for sledding events or ski jumping at the Winter Olympics. It would be too nice to call it insanity when countries regularly build two ski jumping hills for two weeks of competition.

My point is that your concept is going to do very little to reduce costs.  The reason why fewer countries want to host the Olympics isn't just about how much they cost but also they don't want to work with the IOC anymore.  That has been a problem for awhile now and this mess with Tokyo is certainly going to make potential future hosts question whether or not to bid for an Olympics.

 

The Olympic village is usually a major project for even a big city.  You can't just use hotels or student apartments and think that's sufficient.  If it was that easy, then why is Los Angeles the only city to have done that?  You need housing for 11,000 athletes, all the coaches/officials/support staff, and then all of the media attending the games.  All of that needs to be taken care of before anything is made available for spectators.  The village that Tokyo built will be converted into housing after the Olympics (which is why the Games can't be postponed indefinitely), and then if Tokyo wants to host another Olympics in 40 or 60 years, they'll need to do so from scratch.

 

The stadium doesn't have to be a major expense.  Paris is using an existing stadium.  Los Angeles is using an existing stadium (although it's costing $300 million in renovations to make it ready for the Olympics).  Tokyo could have, but they chose not to.  They decided they would be better off building a new stadium.  You mentioned Berlin earlier as an example.. they completely renovated their stadium at the cost of €297 million.  That's still a costly project.  And hosting ceremonies in the city?  How would that even work?

 

Intersting that you mention cycling.. Rio built a velodrome for the 2007 Pan Am games.  UCI then determined it was not suitable for the Olympics and insisted Rio build a new one.  Yes, that's a perfect example of a situation that should not happen.  But again, this is the IOC you're dealing with, an organization that nearly took wrestling out of the Olympics in favor of modern penathlon for political purposes.  Milan had the right idea for 2026 by using existing facilities and spreading them over the country so they don't have to build new ones.  

 

On the Winter side, I think we'll be seeing more repeat hosts in the future since only a few locations have what is required without building new facilities.  But again, that's where legacy plans are important.  There's nothing wrong with building new facilities, but only if there's a plan to use them after the Olympics.  Some cities and countries do that better than others.  And the IOC needs to rely more on places that have existing venues or at least the ones who have more solid plans of how those venues will be used after the Olympics.

[intoronto 5,677]

2 hours ago, JoshMartini007 said:

That's the point, the IOC is creating a situation where nations don't want to host the Olympics because of these requirements when in reality almost everyone is watching the games on a screen.

With Agenda 2020, capacity requirements are now gone. 

(Damn, I sound like Thomas Bach) lol

[Monzanator 4,525]

@Quaker2001 Stan Kroenke build the SoFi stadium for LA Games. Let's don't pretend it's was Los Angeles money, it was Kroenke's private money. And I know you probably had the Memorial Coliseum in mind but with Coliseum alone LA's bid wouldn't be such a no-brainer. Other than the Gulf oil countries, Russia and China not a single country in the world can afford to host the Olympics without any care for public finances. I'm just waiting for Doha to host the Summer Olympics in 2030s, that is another no-brainer given how Qatar has pretty much raised their game into hosting the football World Cup, the second-biggest sportin event in the world after the OG.

[JoshMartini007 2,547]

7 minutes ago, intoronto said:

With Agenda 2020, capacity requirements are now gone. 

(Damn, I sound like Thomas Bach) lol

While technically true, the IOC doesn't follow this...