Tag: Olympic Games

The real legacy of the Olympics: uncomfortable truths.

Olympic StadiumAbout 15 years ago, I visited the Montreal Olympic Village. A captivating and beautiful city, the Olympic Village was a complete contrast. Tired-looking vacant stadia and vast, mostly unused concrete behemoths populated by a few shuffling tourists. I found it a depressing place and the slowly flaking paint symbolised a squandered enterprise. Costing Canada $1bn, the 1976 Montreal Olympics were the greatest financial disaster in the history of the Olympic games.

UK residents will be well-versed with Prime Minister David Cameron’s rhetoric: London 2012 will leave a ‘lasting legacy’ for the UK and London. It will regenerate to a deprived London district; increase tourism, improve infrastructure and give a much-needed economic boost. These are compelling and believable justifications for spending £9bn ($14bn) from the public purse. However, claims of a major economic boost have already shown themselves to be exaggerated: increased sales and footfall in Stratford have so far been cancelled out by losses in the West End.

My heart says that London 2012 is a good thing for the UK. Yet I can’t help feeling we have been misled by the politicians’ claims that it will make a better Britain. There is ample evidence to investigate claims about tourism, economics and even the ‘feelgood’ factor. David Cameron, like practically every country leader before him, has chosen political points over a sincere explanation of the evidence. Let’s find out what the legacy of London 2012 will most likely look like… Read more

The Olympics is Coming to London: So Why Won’t Brits be any Happier?

This post was chosen as an Editor's Selection for ResearchBlogging.orgIt was a shock announcement. Back in 2005, everyone thought Paris had the winning bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Unlike the UK’s hastily put together pitch, the French had spent 20 years fine-tuning theirs. When the IOC president declared that the Olympics were coming to London, scenes of jubilant crowds filled the screens of UK TVs. Celebrities, politicians and even the Queen were tripping over each other to enthuse about this ‘great victory’ for Britain. Were they right?

Now in the midst of economic turmoil, UK politicians still desperately cling to the hope that the Olympic Games represents, as if it were a flaming torch to light the way ahead. They continue to boast that it will boost the economy and importantly, the nation’s happiness. If they had they done their homework, they might have been better informed: Research now shows that all this rhetoric is almost certainly very wrong… Read more