That was the word on Monday from the US Olympic Committee, with regards to the American bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics. After publicly cheerleading the bid from Beantown, the city’s Mayor Marty Walsh made a big show of refusing to sign a guarantee that city taxpayers would foot the bill for cost overruns. The USOC promptly yanked the bid. The result came after support for the games cratered in recent months as the organizing committee stumbled and the opposition scored hit after hit.
Makes sense. The Olympics are a complete and total boondoggle, and when democratic societies find out what they entail, they tend to turn against them. Consider the 2022 Winter Olympics bid from Oslo, which was near certain to win. But already-fragile support collapsed when the Norwegians learned some of the International Olympic Committee’s demands, of which the cheapest and least myopic may have been: “Doves must be released after the parade of athletes but before the head of the Olympic organizing committee speaks at the Opening Ceremony.” The Norwegians (who, again, were all but sure to win, have gobs of oil money, and are nuts for winter sports) withdrew, leaving the IOC to choose (on Friday, in fact) between Beijing and Almaty.
To host the Olympics, you pretty much have to be an autocratic nation, or profoundly unwise with your money. The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics cost over $50 billion dollars. The 2004 Athens Olympics have become an arresting metaphor for a nation that lived beyond its means, and now is paying a bitter price. No Olympic city has broken even since Los Angeles hosted the games in 1984. It’s no surprise that with the demise of the Boston Olympic dream, the USOC is expected to turn to LA to carry the torch once again. It is the only city among the original four US bidders (Washington DC and San Francisco were the others) with the sports facilities to host the games already in place.
Wait a minute, are we talking about cities with a glut of sports facilities? I know just the place!
I’ve written before that once US Bank Stadium is complete, Minnesota United FC have their stadium, and the Target Center has been renovated, MSP will have one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of sports stadia. We are, in essence, an Olympic city without the Olympics. Don’t take my word for it, plan it yourself! If you play the game of trying to assign a venue to each sport, everything falls into place remarkably easily. Here’s the current Olympic program, applied to Minnesota locations:
Aquatics – University of Minnesota Aquatics Center (NEW!)
Archery – Harriet Island
Athletics – US Bank Stadium
Badminton – University of Minnesota Gymnasium
Basketball – Target Center
Boxing – Minneapolis Convention Center
Canoeing/Kayak – Mississippi River, Downtown Saint Paul
Cycling (Track) – National Sports Center (Upgrades needed)
Cycling (Road) – Urban course
Cycling (BMX/Mountain Biking) – Duluth, Duluth Traverse
Equestrian – Somewhere in the suburbs
Fencing – Minneapolis Convention Center
Field Hockey – National Sports Center
Football – Minnesota United FC Stadium (TBD)
Golf – Hazeltine National Golf Club
Gymnastics – Xcel Energy Center
Handball – Target Center
Judo – Minneapolis Convention Center
Modern Pentathalon – All over
Rowing – Mississippi River, Downtown Saint Paul
Ruby Sevens – TCF Bank Stadium
Sailing – Duluth Harbor
Shooting – Harriet Island
Table Tennis – Minneapolis Convention Center
Taekwondo – Minneapolis Convention Center
Tennis – University of Minnesota Tennis Courts (Upgrades needed)
Triathlon – Urban Course
Volleyball (Indoor) – The Armory
Volleyball (Beach) – The Commons (Upgrades needed)
Weightlifting – Minneapolis Convention Center
Wrestling – University of Minnesota Gymnasium
This list has several obvious flaws. TCF Bank Stadium is horribly underused. Neither baseball stadium has been used at all (although baseball and softball could make it). Duluth is involved, which means that Rochester should get something as well. Upgrades for more seating would need to be made for several sports, and both the east and west bank stadiums would need to have their turf covered over with sod.
And yet, these obstacles are easily overcome. Seating capacity for mid-sized events sports like tennis, track cycling, and indoor and beach volleyball could be addressed with temporary bleacher stadiums. Seating capacity for smaller events (like archery) would similarly be temporary. The football offseason is more than long enough for crews to install and strike a track at US Bank and a grass field on both bank stadiums. The only genuinely new facility that might need to be constructed would be a new aquatics center. But that could be built as an upgrade to the University’s current aquatics facility, and it would leave a legacy for the school.
To stating the obvious: the Olympics would be really fun. Everyone loves a party. I can’t be the only one who would love to see the fencing finals take place in the hall of the Union Depot. Or for the sailing finish line to be under the Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge. Some running race could end on the Stone Arch Bridge. The water racing events could take advantage of the Mississippi River gorge. Think of the possibilities!
There are a number of corporate opportunities as well. As we all know, the Twin Cities have a remarkably high number of Fortune 500 companies for our population. Imagine what General Mills could do with Wheaties. Or imagine 3M designing swimsuits. That sound you’re hearing, by the way, is the hummingbird heartbeat of a Mayo Clinic executive as he silently mouths the words “the Official Sports Medicine Provider of the 2024 Olympic Games”.
Minnesota is already lined up to host the Super Bowl in 2018, the 2019 NCAA Final Four, and a group wants to bid for the 2023 World’s Fair. Why not the 2024 Olympics?
Well, okay, because it would still probably be a big waste of money. Having the stadiums on hand would reduce the cost considerably, but there are other absurd costs in 2012, London spent £1 billion on security alone, and they used it to do things like put missile launchers on apartment buildings. That’s the social cost. The Olympics turn cities into armed, excessively sponsored camps for two weeks. The Strib’s comment section would be nuclear. If the games actually made money; if Twin Citizens didn’t flee the cities en masse to their lake homes (if they have them) so that the tourist money was a supplement, not a replacement; if the world was appropriately impressed by our collective niceness to decide they wanted to do business or move here (like Steve Van Zandt’s mobster in ‘Lilyhammer’) then it might just end up being worth it to host. And even then, we could get a lot more for our money by spending it on other things.
In other words, we’re better off pretending we’re hosting the Olympics of early childhood education, than the actual Olympics.
About that, though—the Olympics are undoubtedly good for one thing, and that’s the generation of political capital. That’s part of the allure, even for cities in democracies who know they’re throwing money away. Governments use events like the Olympics as an excuse for infrastructure that was needed, but somehow more politically palatable as an expense for a two week party than as a lasting investment in a community. We’re complicit in this game as much as anyone. Infrastructure isn’t sexy, but the Olympics are. Unfinished or shoddy infrastructure is built all over the world for residents, but when it’s built for the Olympics, it’s a scandal. If, say, the all-powerful Streets.mn lobby decided that Riverview Corridor LRT had to be done by 2024, it would be a hell of a lot easier to get it done if we were hosting the Olympic games. Or, again, if hosting the Olympics depended on making a certain investment in early childhood education.
That’s the allure really. It’s possible to both be mesmerized by the Olympics and to never want it in your city. And by a similar token, it’s possible to be offended and just a bit envious by the way money, power, and interest seem to be uncorked when they’re tied to the games.
We’re ready to host the games. We’ve got all the stadia, a budget surplus, and plenty of urban momentum. Which is all precisely why we won’t hold it.