Boston 2020 Olympics

That's debatable. The pimples that pass as ski resorts here would never pass muster for the Olympics.
 
> Winter Olympics need to be up in the mountains, not down here in the flatlands. New Hampshire or Vermont would be the right place for them.

> That's debatable. The pimples that pass as ski resorts here would never pass muster for the Olympics.

The last few Winter Olympics (Vancouver, Turin) and next one in Sochi are all based on splitting competition into mountain group and the rest. In most cases the distance between the two is quite significant. I'm assuming that will be the case from now on as it is hard to support huge crowds for hockey and the like in mountain resorts...
 
It's too bad it didn't worked out. Nothing like Olympic money to spur improvements in just about everything. There's might be a hang over in 2021 from spending so much (unless the Olympics manage to pull enough to cover there - which been hit and miss), but it would spur the most change and improvements more than we can ever hope.


Money? I found this corporation who will help part of it and some federal money too.
Regulations? We'll expedite the 5 year environmental report to only 1 year and we'll start fast enough so we can use the first engineering survey and not the 10th.
NIMBYs? Hey, sorry, but we're on a time crunch so we have to press along.


While out most reasonable hopes is a Green Line extension and a few upgrades to Route 128 by 2025 . With the Olmypics, maybe the Green Line extension would have already started. Maybe we would be procuring funds for the Blue Line and expansion of South Station. A number of highways projects on tab would probably be starting now and not 2020.

It was a nice dream.
 
I personally think hosting the Olympics is overrated.

Boston would be suited just fine to host the winter Olympics. Look at Vancouver. The alpine events were held about 2 hours away in Whistler.

You could easily have an Olympic village in Boston and host a large amount of events in and around the city. Ice skating could all take place in Boston. The free style moguls, ski jumping and even snowboard half pipe could all take place at Blue Hill. Building a cross country track in the same area would also not be a problem.
 
Have the winter Olympics if you want to expand commuter rail, and summer Olympics for rapid transit. Winter Olympics would be a tremendous jumping point for getting passenger rail to Manchester or Concord. Hold the curling and hockey in the Gahhden, then hop on a train to the slopes!

I can imagine summer Olympics spurring Blue Line to Lynn, Red-Blue, and speeding up GLX, though. Which, IMO, is much more important.
 
The winter Olympics in Vancouver were the impetus for building a heavy rail subway line between downtown and the airport, so I wouldn't say they would fail to leave a rapid transit infrastructure legacy. If Boston built some kind of speed skating track in Lynn it could justify extending the Blue Line and claiming it would derive long-term benefit from the Olympics, for example.

I think the big issue for Boston and the winter Olympics though is that nowhere in New England has a sufficiently steep/high vertical drop, and definitely nowhere within two hours of the city. Even Quebec City has issues with this and it's far more nested in mountainous terrain than Boston is. I don't think you could host many Olympic events in the Blue Hills, if any.
 
Are these amounts consistent with the 800m vertical drop requirement for the Olympics? Killington looks like the best bet -- the longest drop in New England and closest to Boston that meets the requirement. But it's still three hours away (Vancouver-Whistler was two). A Burlington Winter Olympics might make more sense if New England ever wants to host.

Given the number of peaks in NY and the fact that Lake Placid has hosted twice I wonder if Albany could ever pull it off. It'd be a real shot in the arm for that place.
 
Burlington can't be much bigger than Lake Placid, and I don't think they'd ever do it in Lake Placid again. They only used it in 1980 as a last minute option after someone else pulled out. Maybe Portland could do it?
 
Lake Placid has 2,000 people and Burlington has over 100,000 - nearly twice as many as Portland. Not comparable.

Sugarloaf, the only qualifying Maine drop, is also shorter than Killington and similar to the mountain near Quebec City that's been seen as insufficiently high despite meeting the requirement.
 
czsz said:
The winter Olympics in Vancouver were the impetus for building a heavy rail subway line between downtown and the airport, so I wouldn't say they would fail to leave a rapid transit infrastructure legacy. If Boston built some kind of speed skating track in Lynn it could justify extending the Blue Line and claiming it would derive long-term benefit from the Olympics, for example.

I think the big issue for Boston and the winter Olympics though is that nowhere in New England has a sufficiently steep/high vertical drop, and definitely nowhere within two hours of the city. Even Quebec City has issues with this and it's far more nested in mountainous terrain than Boston is. I don't think you could host many Olympic events in the Blue Hills, if any.
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CZ -- Try Tuckerman's Ravine on Mt. Washington for the down hill

The Mt. Washington Road with some cuts along the fall line would provide a very dramatic course for most of the Alpine events
 
Right, but we're looking for Salt Lake City, Vancouver, or Turin. So by comparison Lake Placid and Burlington might as well be the same size, aka too small. And really, what we're looking for is infrastructure more than population.
 
Both Nagano (1998) and Sochi (2014) are cities with ~300,000 people; Pyeongchang (2018) is a rural district with a scattered 40,000, but was probably a special case given it had bid so many times before and everyone was convinced it was South Korea's "turn," whatever the state of its host venue. I think a city the size of Burlington (200k metro) or Albany (1m metro) has a good chance.

Crap infrastructure doesn't mean much if the IOC is convinced for other reasons (see Rio; and one of those reasons is US advertising revenue, which is particularly attractive when a games are held on or near Eastern Time, and a reason the games cycle back to North America more often than they maybe should).

The question is whether they'd ever be selected by the USOC over western cities with more dramatic mountains, like Reno/Tahoe or Denver.
 
czsz said:
Are these amounts consistent with the 800m vertical drop requirement for the Olympics? Killington looks like the best bet -- the longest drop in New England and closest to Boston that meets the requirement. But it's still three hours away (Vancouver-Whistler was two). A Burlington Winter Olympics might make more sense if New England ever wants to host.

Given the number of peaks in NY and the fact that Lake Placid has hosted twice I wonder if Albany could ever pull it off. It'd be a real shot in the arm for that place.
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I did a little research on this, and the next 2 Winter Olympic hosts (Sochi and Pyeongyang) will have coastal and mountain clusters separated by 37 miles. The largest city involved in the Korean bid has a population of 250,000 while Sochi has a municipal population of 350,000.

There's 208,000 people in the Burlington area and 516,000 people in the Portland metro, so based on recent precedent Portland might have a shot if the USOC wasn't so unpopular right now. Since Logan would be the nearest major international airport in that case (other than Bangor, I guess), the Downeaster could see a boost from that, and maybe the N-S Rail Link if the Federal Government decides that New Yorkers should be taking the train up...

EDIT: ^ I think Denver gets the next shot for a US city, possibly the next shot for either Winter or Summer. It makes too much sense. I'm surprised Salt Lake got first crack, actually.
 
I didn't realize the Portland metro was so huge compared to the city proper. Hmm, that might boost its chances.

Denver was blacklisted by the IOC when it turned down the 1976 games after having been awarded them (forcing an emergency games to be organized in Innsbruck), and has only recently woven its way back into their good graces, which is why SLC was the nominee in previous years instead.
 
Equilibria said:
I did a little research on this, and the next 2 Winter Olympic hosts (Sochi and Pyeongyang) will have coastal and mountain clusters separated by 37 miles. The largest city involved in the Korean bid has a population of 250,000 while Sochi has a municipal population of 350,000.

There's 208,000 people in the Burlington area and 516,000 people in the Portland metro, so based on recent precedent Portland might have a shot if the USOC wasn't so unpopular right now. Since Logan would be the nearest major international airport in that case (other than Bangor, I guess), the Downeaster could see a boost from that, and maybe the N-S Rail Link if the Federal Government decides that New Yorkers should be taking the train up...

EDIT: ^ I think Denver gets the next shot for a US city, possibly the next shot for either Winter or Summer. It makes too much sense. I'm surprised Salt Lake got first crack, actually.
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Boston should think of a bid close to the 400th anniversary -- Winter and Summer -- build one Olympic Village and some dual use facilities for skating/biking, basketball/hockey with far flung secondary city venues for the kayacks, downhill skiing, etc and with Information Tech providing the links to allow people at all of the venues to see everything as if it was live on the scene
 
Equilibria said:
EDIT: ^ I think Denver gets the next shot for a US city, possibly the next shot for either Winter or Summer. It makes too much sense. I'm surprised Salt Lake got first crack, actually.
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Denver blew it the one time it was selected. The IOC (and likely USOC) will never touch Denver with a ten foot ski pole.
 
Thread should be renamed "Crazy Olympics Pitches" ... anyway, where would you build the Olympic village?
 
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