"Bitter Side Of Olympics"

Neeraj Chopra, Mirabai Chanu, Ravi Dhiya, PV Sindhu, Lovlina Borgohain, Bajrang Punia & Indian Men’s Hockey team, Hearing these names still gives goosebumps to every Indian. All our Olympic Heroes.

But Do you know, that there is another side of the Olympics, of which we are not aware?

Disclaimer: I do not intend to criticize any participant, winner, the body of associations conducting the game, or any nation.

Hello Everyone,

Today we will have a look at the Olympics, Rather the darker and hidden side of the renowned event.

Today’s Key takeaways are:

1.The Economic Effects on the Host Country.

2. Huge Infrastructure cost.

3. The burden on residents of the host country and city.

4. Environmental Effects.

Economic Effects to host countries:

Holding Olympics is not as easy as holding and cricket tournament. It Involves huge costs. Submitting a bid to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to host the Olympics costs millions of dollars. The country typically spends $50 million to $100 million in fees for consultants, event organizers, and travel-related to hosting duties. For example, Tokyo lost approximately $150 million on its bid for the 2016 Olympics and spent approximately $75 million on its successful 2020 bid.

Hosting the games is even more costly than the bidding process. The Tokyo Olympics are set to be the most expensive Olympics on record. According to officials, the budget is $15.4 billion, but Japanese government auditors have said total spending tops $20 billion.

Sometimes the host country is buried under the huge burden of debts. Greece experienced a recession, and one of the prominent reasons was hosting the summer Olympics-2004

Huge Infrastructure cost :

Cities must first invest millions of dollars in evaluating, preparing, and submitting a bid to the IOC. The cost of planning, hiring consultants, organizing events, and the necessary travel.

Once a city is chosen to host, it has nearly a decade to prepare for the influx of athletes and tourists. The Summer Games, attract hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists to watch over ten thousand athletes compete in about three hundred events.

The most immediate need is the creation or upgrading of highly specialized sports facilities such as cycling tracks and ski-jumping arenas, the Olympic Village, and a venue large enough to host the opening and closing ceremonies.

There is also usually the need for more general infrastructure, especially housing and transportation. The IOC requires cities hosting the summer games to have a minimum of forty thousand available hotel rooms (Before Covid). And also Roads, train lines, and airports need to be upgraded or constructed.

Operational costs make up a smaller but still significant chunk of hosts’ Olympics budget. Security costs have escalated quickly since the 9/11 attacks.

The most problematic is expensive facilities, because of their size or specialized nature, which have limited post-Olympics use. These often impose costs for years to come. Sydney’s Olympic stadium costs the city $30 million a year to maintain. Beijing’s famous “Bird’s Nest” stadium costs $460 million to build and requires $10 million a year to maintain and sits mostly unused.

The burden on residents of the host country and city :

To make way for Beijing’s 2008 Olympic infrastructure, an estimated 1.5million people were forcibly evicted from their homes with minimal compensation. The neighborhoods were destroyed and residents were removed to the outskirts of the city far from friends, family, and places of work.

Residents near Rio de Janeiro’s 2016 Olympic Stadium, whose homes were set to be demolished, were forcibly removed in a “bloody confrontation between police and residents” that reportedly involved the use of rubber bullets and percussion grenades.

Once the games are done, it has been also observed that the property value of the Olympic Village deteriorates drastically, on account of no further usage.

Environmental Effects:

We are awestruck when we watch the huge stadiums, the facilities provided to athletes, The Big bang opening and closing ceremonies, But have we ever thought beyond this, No!, So let's look into this now.

1 Deforestation:

For the Olympic downhill track in Jeongseon, tens of thousands of trees had to be cut down.

2 Usage of artificial Snow:

Not all places are suitable for the winter Olympics, you need snow, If there is none around, organizers get snow cannons ready to cover all slopes with artificial snow. That’s how it’s done in Pyeongchang because the winters there are dry with less snowfall.

3 Harm to the Mountain ranges:

The Olympics in Sochi, Russia, had a higher environmental impact than any other Games, environmentalists have said. Deforested mountains, heavy equipment brought into nature reserves — the entire region became a construction site.

4 Illegal Dumping

Wherever construction takes place, debris is sure to pile up. Rubble accumulated around Sochi, and according to activists, it was simply dumped into quarries and former nature reserves. Ordinary garbage piled up as well and made its way into water conservation areas. Residents complained that they ran out of drinking water.

5 Smog

The Beijing Summer Olympics made the extremely high air pollution in China a topic of conversation the world over. In the months and even days leading up to the Games, there was a thick haze over the Olympic stadium. The top floors of Beijing’s skyscrapers could hardly be made out through the smog. Doctors warned of respiratory problems for athletes.

6. Apart from the aforesaid, every other activity counts for pollution like the construction, the usage of fuel in traveling, The huge amount of the crackers and other fireworks used in the ceremonies, The bumper electricity and water usages and the list carries on and on.

Although there are benefits like,

The Olympics increase valuable tourism, which can boost local economies, increase a host country’s global trade and stature and Olympics create a sense of national pride. But I find these causes are not enough to overlook the disasters.