Olympic Assignment
Saturday, November 20th, 2010 | Assignments for TLEP 4830
My Olympic article came from the Utah Travel Center. The Olympics took place in Salt Lake in 2002, for the Winter Games and in my opinion, were a great success.
After the games took place the Utah Athletic Foundation inherited all the Olympic facilities. It was then their goal to provide Utah citizens with facilities that they would be able to use, in thanks for their support with the building of the games. Each facility used in the 2002 Olympic Games has since been transformed into community facilities, open to the public.
The Utah Olympic Oval is currently known as one of the premiere speed skating facilities in the world and offers many ‘Learn To’ programs for residents. Both adult and children skating lessons take place here as well as many hockey games and practices. The Utah Olympic Park was used for Nordic jumping, bobsledding and luge during the games. Now, visitors are able to take bobsled rides year round, participate in ski camps, and continue to use multiple ski jumps still available. The facility is now also home to a ski museum. At the third facility, Soldier Hallow provides its visitors with cross country trails, skiing and snowboarding, snow tubing, and it even offers a rental shop for those in need of equipment.
As you can see the Utah Olympic facilities have continued to be of use to residents and visitors alike. The organization in charge of their transformation did an unbelievable job with planning and developing the areas into usable facilities for locals. I believe that part of the success for this amazing transformation is because of the residents in Utah, and their interests. As one of the top states in exercise and outdoor recreation I feel it would be difficult for a state, such as Ohio, to make use of the facilities. With this said I think that many areas that have held Olympic Games in them have difficulty figuring out how to transform their buildings into facilities used for more than just sports. One of the cities that have had trouble developing after the games has been Athens.
Athens, Greece was home to the 2004 Summer Olympic Games and has since been looking like a rundown parking lot. According to my comparison article 21or the 22 facilities used for the summer games are now in a state of despair. While I cannot be sure as to why exactly the games were not a success for such a historically rich city, I can provide a few possible insights. As discussed in class, a world city is known as a city familiar with people all throughout the world. I think with Athens being a world city people did not look at it as an area to go visit to either see the games or to see the buildings constructed for them. With a place like Salt Lake, nobody in China really knows where or what it is. With that said I think with an area like Utah, which has had a fraction of international visitors compared to Greece, the Olympics get the name out and make international and domestic travelers, want to visit the area. Also different from Utah, Greece did nothing with the buildings after the games left they are continuing to be rundown and vandalized by citizens. This has caused the city to have held the Olympics and then gain a small one time profit, also known as transitory.
Overall I think it can be very hard for cities to really benefit from the Olympic Games. It takes a lot of work to stay within the budget when building the facilities as well as transforming them into useful facilities afterwards. I believe the majority of cities that host the games end up experiencing the Plateau Theory, their revenue and visitation statistics go up for a few months and slowly but surely they start to head back down to where they were when they began. Needless to say, it would be very difficult to decide whether or not to host the games and it would require planners to look at every possible option of outcomes, including the horrible ones.