Badly run Olympics can be parasite on host city

• Source: Global Times
• [22:07 February 24 2010]
• Comments

Dave Zirin

Editor's Note:

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics has been facing one of the chilliest domestic receptions since the beginning of the Olympic history. Dave Zirin (Zirin), a radical US sportswriter and one of Utne Reader's "50 Visionaries who are Changing Your World for 2009," holds that Olympics sometimes bring three things: Police repression, budget-busting graft, and hardcore gentrification and displacement. Global Times (GT) reporter Chen Chenchen talked to Zirin on the plight facing the Olympic Games.

GT: Do you think that British Columbia residents' resistance toward the Vancouver Olympics reflects that some badly run Olympic Games can result in a deficit for the host city?

Zirin: I was in Vancouver last month. Polls released on my first day in Vancouver were startling.

Only 50 percent of residents in British Columbia think the Olympics will be positive and 69 percent said too much money is being spent on the Games.

If the global recession hadn't smacked into the planning last year, with corporate sponsors fleeing for the hills, maybe the Vancouver Organizing Committee would be on more solid ground with residents. But public bailouts of Olympic projects have decisively altered the local mood.

I spoke to Charles, a bus driver, whose good cheer diminished when I asked him about the Games. "I just can't believe I wanted this a year ago," he said, "I voted for it in the plebiscite. But now, yes. I'm disillusioned."

This disillusion is developing as the financial burden of the Games becomes public. The original cost estimate was $660 million in public money. It's now at an admitted $6 billion and steadily climbing.

An early economic impact statement was that the Games could bring in $10 billion. The accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers just released their own study showing that the total income will be more like $1 billion.

In addition, the Olympic Village came in $100 million over budget and had to be bailed out by the city.

Security was estimated at $175 million and the final cost will exceed $1 billion.

These budget overruns are coinciding with drastic cuts to city services.

On my first day in town, the cover of the local paper blared cheery news about the Games on the top flap, while a headline announcing the imminent layoff of 800 teachers was much further down the page.

It doesn't take a doctorate in political science to see the problems here.