Richard Brenne has written an interesting post on why climate change means 2010 was probably Vancouver’s last opportunity to host the winter Olympics:
Global warming is the reason Vancouver will never host another Winter Olympics. They barely dodged (biathlon) bullets at dozens of events, and the Olympic Committee would rather use Donald Trump’s hair as the Olympic flame than go through this again. Climate change is all about likelihoods of things like the record warmth Vancouver has had increasing, and the Olympic Committee rolled Jim Hansen’s dice and came up snake eyes.
He goes on to describe the extreme efforts taken to improve snow conditions, as well as the unusual circumstances in which events were conducted: from snowboard events on slushy runs to Nordic skiers racing in unprecedented temperatures.
The whole thing is worth reading.
The bits of that post on energy-constrained future Olympics are also interesting. If the peak oil people are right, it may well be that the recent Beijing Olympics will prove the most extravagant ones ever.
I think the solution is to have people compete virtually. Everybody wins: athletes get to compete; sports/nationalism fans get their Olympics; cities don’t have to invest in new infrastructure and lose money; and of course, there’s no traveling involved.
Or they could give the Olympics a permanent home, perhaps in Switzerland.
I have seen a few editorials and op-eds making that suggestion recently.
It would save a lot on the construction of facilities, and a location can be chosen where the climate will support winter games for a few decades, at least. Admittedly, it would be a lot less exciting than the current rotating approach.
Give the Olympics a Home
By CHARLES BANKS-ALTEKRUSE
Published: February 28, 2010
THE Winter Olympics are over, and while the Vancouver Games had moments of glory, I couldn’t help but conclude — as the snow refused to fall on the gleaming new walkways of the Olympic Village — that rotating Olympic sites does more harm than good. The tradition ought to be replaced by the creation of a permanent site for both the Summer and Winter Games.
The father of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, thought that rotating Olympic sites would promote peace and understanding and open portals into exciting foreign cultures. But the idea of those portals seems quaint in the Internet age. At the same time, the financial problems plaguing the Games — corruption, recurring cost overruns, decaying former venues and excessively costly bid campaigns — have tarnished the luster of hosting the Olympics. Nonetheless, like lemmings, cities queue up to compete to lose money, only to regret it later.
The poster child of financial calamity remains the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where costs exceeded estimates by some 400 percent, nearly bankrupted the city and took 30 years to pay off. The $14.4 billion cost of the 2004 Athens Games likely contributed to Greece’s financial problems today. And of course there were the extravagant 2008 Beijing Games, with a reported price tag of $40 billion or more. A lack of transparency obscures the full cost of China’s outlays, but already many Olympic structures have been shuttered. And the 2012 London Olympics are already over budget, while plans for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia call for building most venues from scratch.
Few Olympic cities have fared better. The Olympic committee in Sydney reported that the 2000 Games, widely considered a success, had broken even, but the Australian state auditor estimated a long-term cost of over $2 billion. The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics made a profit — but only because organizers relied on existing arenas and volunteer labor.
In crude financial terms, hosting is a disaster: the 2004 games in Athens cost the Greek government about $16 billion (about 5% of the government’s total debt) and the swimming complex remains unused. Mr Goldblatt reckons that, of the 17 Olympic tournaments held between the second world war and 2012, only the one in Los Angeles, in 1984, actually made a profit. Moreover, the idea that the games makes a host nation more athletic has no foundation. In Britain, fewer people do sport now than did before the Olympics in 2012. Little wonder, then, that a “Nolympics” movement has built up, made of protesters against hosting the games.
Daniel Scott of the University of Waterloo, Robert Steiger of the University of Innsbruck, and others, have looked at this future warming in the context of the cities chosen to host the Winter Olympics, from Chamonix in 1924 to Pyeongchang in South Korea next month and Beijing in 2022. Even if emissions are cut to meet the target of the Paris climate agreement of 2015, only 13 of the 21 look certain to be cold enough to host snow-sports in the 2050s. With high emissions, the number would drop to just eight in the 2080s. The sight of helicopters rushing snow to Olympic sites in Vancouver in 2010 may be a harbinger of the future.
Climate change will limit choice for Winter Games hosts, says Canadian study
https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/climate-and-environment/climate-change-will-limit-choice-for-winter-games-hosts-says-canadian-study-1.5745321
Climate change and the future of the Olympic Winter Games: athlete and coach perspectives
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13683500.2021.2023480?src=&journalCode=rcit20
Beijing the first Winter Olympics host to rely entirely on artificial snow
Experts worry that the push to transform Zhangjiakou will worsen the region’s severe water scarcity, which ranks among the worst in the country
https://nationalpost.com/sports/olympics/highly-water-stressed-region-in-beijing-is-first-to-host-winter-olympics-relying-entirely-on-artificial-snow
Can winter sports survive on a warming planet?
The Snowman cometh: one man’s fight to save skiing
https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/01/31/can-winter-sports-survive-on-a-warming-planet