IOC and Other Officials: feat. Bond Villain Kitty Chiller

[SnideAsides]

A thread to discuss the IOC, the judges, and various other non-athlete public figures involved in the Rio Olympics.

(And yes, Kitty Chiller is a real person: she's the chef de mission for Australia's team.)

[AimingforYoko]

That definitely sounds like a name Fleming would've come up with. I do hope Rio (And Brazil) pull their act together, otherwise the IOC will restrict the games to Europe, East Asia and North America for the foreseeable future.

[Rick Kitchen]

Kuala Lumpur/Singapore, Doha, Casablanca, Nairobi, Cairo, Johannesburg, and Buenos Aires are all putting together bids for 2028.

[SnideAsides]

From what I've heard, the IOC was so impressed by South Africa's hosting of the 2010 soccer World Cup (despite foisting the vuvuzela upon the world) that they're pretty much at the point of just giving them the games by default when they finally get around to submitting a bid, although with Rogge out of the picture that might have changed. The only other cities that I could see hosting in 2028 are Brisbane (Bach's been pushing for another Australian bid for a while, his deputy is Aussie, and it's the AOC's first choice for a city), Melbourne (the AOC's second choice, which would bid for 2028 if Brisbane refused to, or 2032 if Brisbane lost), and Amsterdam (unlikely right now because of Dutch politics, but their "100 years since 1928" bid goes through phases of support and it's a far stronger case than Paris is making for their 2024 bid (among other arguments, it'd also be the 100th anniversary of the cauldron, which would be a great way to retcon the Nazis involvement in the torch relay out of that part of Olympic history)).

The final shortlist for 2024 is Paris, Rome, Budapest, and LA, and... I'm honestly not sure where it's going. Budapest seems to know it's not winning and is mostly using this bid as practice for 2028 or 2032, Rome has the support of basically everyone in Italy except its new mayor, the IOC was not happy with the change from Boston for the US bid, and Paris seems to be leaning towards a "we can't really afford it right now, but keep us on the waiting list" dropout within the next few months. If I had to guess, I'd say Paris if they stay in, otherwise Rome.

[Kromm]

I am curious why anyone WANTS to host an Olympics now.  EVERY Olympics has a vast cost overrun.  Every last one.  A good deal of it due to corruption, but I've yet to see any real evidence from anywhere that an Olympics has really helped ANY city in the past 20 years or so.  Rio may turn out to be the next nightmare, but it won't be the last one. 

I almost think the only reasonable way to carry on the tradition would be for the Olympics to have a permanent home--where the investment in the particular facilities would have far longer to pay out, the city planning/rezoning needed for traffic only has to be done once, the basic security setup is permanently on hand--albeit something they'd still have to recalculate and update every four years, etc.

It's a pipe dream. The politics of the Olympics would never allow it. 

It's hard to really get to the truth of figures too. Britain still claims for example that the 2012 Olympics in the end boosted their economy. But I've also seen many articles which claim the exact opposite--that the obvious things which were boosted were more than counteracted by the costs.