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Iirc the bid only required like two or three venues to be built. The rest were repurposed University venues. And the Olympic Villiage was going to be repurposed into UMass Boston Dorms
People felt any public money/resources was a waste of money so canned it. But it wasn’t Rio 2016 built the games from scratch situation
Olympics in Boston would have sucked and Been a hot ass mess- I agree with mass.
A bunch of old collegiate venues and some old under resourced parks would have to be spruced up but kind of lipstick on a pig. MBTA and highways couldn't handle it an people would get lost and confused.
Boston's sports status begins and end with professional north American based sports leagues.
If I recall correctly LA and Paris were awarded the games simultaneously. As there was a bit of a fiasco as bids were being pulled left and right for various reasons. It was unusual to award the 2028 and 2024 games nearly simultaneously but at the time LA and Paris were the only people who actually wanted them.
As a result, if Boston had wanted them it’s almost certain they would have gotten either 24 or 28
i do however agree if Boston wanted it we would have got it . People abroad seem to love Boston.
but i was there when this was happening and I took every opportunity i had to say "no- we dont want this."
Where's your proof of this? Boston is very provincial, I don't see Boston on the international radar.
Lol...
Boston is one of the 10 most international cities in the US by any metric you use. Ive seen celebrations for events in Moroccco Albania Haiti Barbados Canada Uganda Dominican RepublicsMontserrat Vietnam Ireland China Brazil etc. 50% of the city is an immigrant or child of an immigrant. And its a top ten state for % of immigrants.
Really everyone knows Boston had it in the bag. If you followed it out of Boston when it was happening it was all but a done deal until we withdrew.
The provincial comes into play in that we (including Me) HATED the idea and did not want it although the US Olympic Selection committee did and the IOC did. They wanted to return to the US, hence why they settled for a retread in LA.
1996 Atlanta had under 400k people and 2.5 million people in the metro...they hosted the Olympics. And you dont think 2024 Boston could or was desired to? Now thats funny.
Iirc the bid only required like two or three venues to be built. The rest were repurposed University venues. And the Olympic Villiage was going to be repurposed into UMass Boston Dorms
People felt any public money/resources was a waste of money so canned it. But it wasn’t Rio 2016 built the games from scratch situation
Boston wouldve never built 2/3 stadiums to code and in time. And it would be due entirely to local opposition, community process, and union labor.
Look at our train system. Look at any building that uses public funds for a municipal purpose (UMass Boston that u mentioned being a prime example- a campus that been like 60% rebuilt depsite being 50 years old. Took them legit 40 years to get started on building a residence hall).
Disagree. If you're a "sports capital", wouldn't the venues already be pretty much in place?
This goes back to the OP article and then just going with legacy sports that people are comfortable with and using that as the yardstick.
All of the cities that ever said, "Boy, we sure did dodge a bullet by not (getting picked for that convention/bullding that light rail system/agreeing to that downtown development deal/hosting the Olympics)" aren't necessarily wrong in their reasoning, but understand all of those things would almost certainly increase their stature.
So you can't have it both ways-you can be right about the reasons for not wanting it, but then can't just summarily write them off because you didn't get them.
Hol up Hol up Hol up..... 'Wouldnt extra olympic venues already be in place'? Why?
We already have venues for all of our sports teams and college teams. I dont understand this part tof your comment LA has venues in part because its already hosted the games, sprawls for 10,000 square miles and was building new stadiums at the time anyway....
Gillette, TD Garden (recently voted best arena in the NBA by media poll) and Fenway are some of the best/most famous venues in sports. Why would we be looking to build new ones for no reason? Two of those venues were less than 20 years old when the bid was being discussed...
we just keep 3 Olympic quality arenas on deck just in case the IOC wants to have a cup of coffee? Nnnnnaw....
but also i dont think theres a city that people didn't know of that they then knew about because of the Olympics. Maybe Atlanta but Atlanta in 1996 is in no way comparable to Boston in 2015 or 2024. It was wiiiide open land all over and in need of a Boston and it was an opportunity for the US to do some racial equity/justice healing PR.
Boston wouldve never built 2/3 stadiums to code and in time. And it would be due entirely to local opposition, community process, and union labor.
Look at our train system. Look at any building that uses public funds for a municipal purpose (UMass Boston that u mentioned being a prime example- a campus that been like 60% rebuilt depsite being 50 years old. Took them legit 40 years to get started on building a residence hall).
I mean the beach volleyball stadium was basically some metal bleachers on the common. I think the only “real building” was the Velodrome which was suppose to be in Somerville.
But I agree, Boston 2024 wouldn’t be Atlanta 96. The equivalent would be Charlotte of Cleveland 24. Boston already has a huge international profile. Atlanta did not in 1996
Greece/Athens can't support the modern Olympics. Aren't most of the facilities that they built in disrepair and examples of why smaller economies can't afford the Olympics? Like many cities they bet heavily on tourism increases that never materialized.
It's because after these atrocious facilities get built globally there's nothing in place to keep them permanently. However, if the Olympics said "Hey, let's get back to our roots and always have them in Athens" then the Olympics and even other nation's teams can train in them and support that long-term.
The issue politically and environmentally is that such a big event keeps getting rotated when it's not good to do so.
Places like Athens would actually benefit from being able to have this long-term. Other major cities like London? Don't need something like this to help its economy. Greece has a lot of problems right now economically and this would help it. But Greece had to let go of the facilities because it had no other choice. Do we support clustering literally everything into the hands of the wealthy, or to spread it around? Just curious.
Of course no one here actually wants to talk about something useful to the topic, like how Atlanta is becoming the Soccer HQ, and instead would rather debate a hypothetical on IF the US gets the Olympics again, WHO could host it. It really doesn't matter at the end of the day, because no one would support it politically in the US. Atlanta having done so in the 90s was arguably the last time the US, as a whole, had the economic means for its people and companies to actually fund an Olympics.
Last edited by Prickly Pear; 11-27-2023 at 05:06 PM..
Yeah, I think it would undoubtedly help Boston's international recognition. No, Boston is not Sochi or Turin - places most people outside of the region wouldn't know of it it weren't for the Olympics. But it's also not Tokyo, London, LA, or even Berlin - a place that most people around the world know of. It's probably in a similar position to Oslo, Atlanta, Barcelona, Montreal, Vancouver, etc. All cities that are known, but had their status boosted by being Olympic hosts.
To be fair, Boston's fairly well known in major world cities. Especially in places that are players in tech, healthcare, finance, etc. And you can go to remote parts of the world where people will know of and associate Boston with Harvard, MIT, and often one or a number of its sports teams. But hosting the Olympics would definitely expand Boston's recognition and association beyond Harvard/MIT and sports. It would arguably do more for places like Portland, Providence, Newport, etc. which would almost certainly go from places people haven't heard of to on the radar. Whether it would generate enough of a sustained economic impact to justify the billions in investment and disruption is another story.
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Originally Posted by 2Easy
We're getting off topic but to add to that I was watching a YouTube soccer show and the guys were in Qatar and said that the new city looks like a ghost town. The idea was that people would view Qatar as the next Dubai and that the super rich would move there and so far that's not happening at all.
Well that is the thing- people already know Boston.... and having the olympics wouldnt make people think of it as Tokyo. As we know- many people have a VERY fixed idea of what Boston is and I don't think he Olympics or anything else short of densifying and changing some of the restrictive laws would have any effect. I for one am glad not to see the cringe images of lobsters, duckboats, whales and hearing announcers say "chowdah" and "hahvid" for 8 weeks id rather waterboard myself.
I think the Olympics would have no impact on anything.
We've already been known as a place that loves sports- as evidenced by this poll and this discussion. And Bostonians (rightfully) didn't want the unneeded traffic disruptions, basically guaranteed gentrification, and years of construction for a city that already leads the world in 1 or 2 categories. And was deep in the middle of championships in various sports. No appetite for it.
The lies coming about the MBTA improving were downright scary to me. There weren't any significant positives that would pan out for anyone other than developers.
I mean the beach volleyball stadium was basically some metal bleachers on the common. I think the only “real building” was the Velodrome which was suppose to be in Somerville.
But I agree, Boston 2024 wouldn’t be Atlanta 96. The equivalent would be Charlotte of Cleveland 24. Boston already has a huge international profile. Atlanta did not in 1996
Yea I remember that and was just speaking about that at thanksgiving. Volley Ball on the Common would be so anticlimactic d rather not. I think they were talking about holding events at Franklin Field smh. A Velodrome sounds like an off the wall waste of money lol. But im pretty sure tthey wanted to build a "temporary" 70k seat olympic stadium Today that land has been bought for maintenance of our aging MBTA trains.
8 sports never had alloted venues at all. Imagine that cluster...how that wouldve shaken out
Better yet imagine driving 3 hours west to rural Deerfield MA for "Canoe-slalom(??): and to Worcester JUST for Handball. insane.
A stadium designed for track PLUS football is bad for football. Anything else -- a velodrome, an aquatics center, etc. -- has no reason to seat a five-figure crowd after the Olympics. These will always be white elephants.
As for Athens and lower-wealth areas, are we sure Olympics are a net positive? They're often accused of dominating the public agenda and budget in place of bigger needs. A spike in jobs ever four years isn't going to help the workforce. The facilities tend to waste land.
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