151–160 of 196 posts
Depending on what they'll decide to do, I can clearly see this becoming a situation that many will consider unfair.
This is such a painful situation for Japan. When I visited a couple a years ago the preparations were still going full force. They were so proud and looking forward to hosting it. Really think they are between a rock and a hard place with any decision. This together with all the sub-human conditions the workers in Qatar for the football world championship make it seem like organising events like this not something I…
>> make it seem like organising events like this not something I would feel comfortable with hosting in my own country. Vancouver Olympics 2010. No, it did not make a profit, and there was a fiasco involving how the athletes village was converted into condos, but the city did not go crazy over preparations. Most of the venues were already there. Whistler was already a winter sports mecca. Vancouver didn't need to bui…
There is/was a movement to make the winter olympics permanently fixed in a few northern cities, Vancouver being one of them, in order to prevent the wasteful fiascos that are witnessed from time to time.
Obviously that was a non-starter. The enormous expenditure (and wealth transfer) of public funds is sort of the point. ;)
I hope big tournaments will be more distributed in the future. Like soccer, no need for Qatar to kill thousands to build lots of stadiums that won't be used much in the future. Do like the Euro was going to: Have multiple host cities and reuse existing stadiums. Olympics make everyone build a bob sleigh track. But it's such a niche sport and no one will ever use it again in most of the world. Or for summer olympics,…
I fear the only way things will change is if the world refuses to bid on hosting these things. Then the IOC will have to get creative if they want to see their corrupt legacy continue.
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>> make it seem like organising events like this not something I would feel comfortable with hosting in my own country. Vancouver Olympics 2010. No, it did not make a profit, and there was a fiasco involving how the athletes village was converted into condos, but the city did not go crazy over preparations. Most of the venues were already there. Whistler was already a winter sports mecca. Vancouver didn't need to bui…
We badly needed the highway and transit improvements, too. Almost none of the new construction went to waste. There is/was a movement to make the winter olympics permanently fixed in a few northern cities, Vancouver being one of them, in order to prevent the wasteful fiascos that are witnessed from time to time. Obviously that was a non-starter. The enormous expenditure (and wealth transfer) of public funds is sort o…
There is much debate about this, particularly in regards to the Sea to Sky highway improvements. The old highway wasn't great, it was rough in spots, but the improvements have had unwanted effects. Making the highway easier means more people are doing day trip to whistler from Vancouver. Rather than stay in whistler people are staying at cheaper hotels in Vancouver. That means less local revenue and increased highway traffic. And no effort was made to improve non-car traffic along the route. No rail improvements. No bus lanes. Nothing much other than making the existing 2/4-lane road straighter and faster.
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This is outdated speculation. The preponderance of current evidence points toward what we expect from previous vaccines -- once you've been immunized, you are incredibly unlikely to transmit the virus to others: https://reason.com/2021/03/08/contrary-to-what-the-cdcs-new-... In fact, the CDC just updated it's own guidelines to reflect these same facts: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0... I…
From your cited Reason article: > During a follow-up period beginning seven days after the second dose, vaccinated subjects were 92 percent less likely to test positive for the coronavirus, 94 percent less likely to develop COVID-19 symptoms, and 92 percent less likely to suffer serious disease. In other words, the risk of infection at this stage was much smaller than it was in the unvaccinated group. Although that r…
Nothing is guaranteed in life. There is always risk.
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Hosting the Olympics costs somewhere between US$15-20 billion. If the goal is really to put a city 'on the map' you could spend less than 5% of that money on an extensive cultural/tourism marketing campaign and have more of an effect. I've yet to meet anyone who's chosen Sochi as a vacation destination.
Winter Olympics locations rarely end up as tourist destinations because people take fewer international vacations to cold locations. Summer Olympics have a better shot, and the stadiums can more often be useful long term. But, it’s still low odds of success. The best bet seems to be a lesser known location which can use most of the infrastructure and has some non Olympics tourist destinations. Which isn’t a huge list…
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We badly needed the highway and transit improvements, too. Almost none of the new construction went to waste. There is/was a movement to make the winter olympics permanently fixed in a few northern cities, Vancouver being one of them, in order to prevent the wasteful fiascos that are witnessed from time to time. Obviously that was a non-starter. The enormous expenditure (and wealth transfer) of public funds is sort o…
>> We badly needed the highway and transit improvements, too There is much debate about this, particularly in regards to the Sea to Sky highway improvements. The old highway wasn't great, it was rough in spots, but the improvements have had unwanted effects. Making the highway easier means more people are doing day trip to whistler from Vancouver. Rather than stay in whistler people are staying at cheaper hotels in V…
For most of my life skiing at Whistler was totally out of reach. The one or two of my peers who went yearly were among the wealthiest.
Glad it's no longer an exclusive playground for Vancouver's wealthy.
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The venues for Olympic Winter games are by definition where people go for ski trips, they may build varying amounts of infrastructure for non-skiing events but they will have an economy already geared around tourism.
Cortina d'Ampezzo is hosting the 2026 Winter ski events, and yes it’s a ski destination but only has a peak of 40k residents in the winter which is when the Olympic boom would hypothetically take place. That’s not a huge economy to absorb a short term spike in tourism when it’s focused on a few months out of the year. Worse it’s not like there is a massive untapped surplus of people doing international ski vacations.…
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just because the seatings positions were slightly bad). A lot of the IOC (and probably FIFA) requirements seem silly. Pretty soon, we're going to see the Olympics go back and forth between LA and Paris just because they're the only cities that naturally have the required infrastructure, unless there's a change.
Not if they keep changing stuff. The stadium in question was the one for bicycle racing, it was built for the Pan-American games. Right after those games, IOC decided to change the percentage of seats allowed behind pillars. So they concluded the solution, instead of reducing amount of seats or something, was to demolish the entire stadium, and build a new one with the support pillars in new locations.