Boston 2020 Olympics

A hypothetical 2012 Winter Olympics in New England would have been pretty disastrous, not by anyone's fault either.
 
^ They had very warm conditions in Vancouver for 2010 as well, and it turned out fine.
 
The only FIS certified Downhill course east of the Rockies is at Whiteface, near Lake Placid. This is arguably one of the more glamorous events of the Winter Olympics and an adequate course is a necessity. Some may make the argument that Sugarloaf (ME) has adequate vertical drop and steepness for a downhill course if necessary, but the highest level race it has hosted lately has been NCAA.
 
I am sure if Boston were ever selected to host, whatever mountain was selected to host the downhill portion could have certain trails reconfigured to meet the requirements. In fact, I am surprised some of the bigger mountains have not done this to lure a world cup event.

Other than the alpine events (mens and womens downhill, super g, etc.) the rest of the events could very easily take place in the close vicinity of Boston.

Speed skating could take place at the Agganis Arena.
Figure Skating at the TD Garden
Freestyle moguls at Blue Hill
Curling at Matthews Arena
Aerials at Blue Hill
Ski Cross at Blue Hill
Snowboard Half Pipe and Cross at Blue Hill
Ice Hockey at TD Garden and prelims at Conte Forum


You could easily use Wachusett as a host for some of the freestyle and snowboard events. And even build the track for bobsled and skeleton out there.
 
^ That is all well and good but have you not noticed that a host of brand new facilities are required to get a bid? The IOC makes cities bankrupt themselves overbuilding all sorts of stuff that they won't really need again.
 
Suggest that this thread move to the Build a better Boston along with the Reasonable and Crazy Transit Pitches
 
Semass said:
^ That is all well and good but have you not noticed that a host of brand new facilities are required to get a bid? The IOC makes cities bankrupt themselves overbuilding all sorts of stuff that they won't really need again.
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I actually don't think the IOC does this at all. In fact, they've lately been favoring bids with reusable/temporary facilities, as well as cities which use existing infrastructure. London's using the O2 Arena for Basketball this summer, for instance, and their stadium will be shrunk significantly after the games, while Rio in 2016 is using an existing stadium with some modifications, which it needed anyway.

I think the real issue is that cities use the Olympic bid as an opportunity to revitalize dying neighborhoods or build up new ones, and that's all located too far from existing facilities for them to be of much use, particularly for the Summer. Governments see it as an ego project, and lots of them (China, Qatar for the World Cup) have too much disposable income to throw at it.

But for the serious downhill events, I'm not sure what more Boston would need to build. Maybe a 50,000-seat or so stadium for opening/closing ceremonies in Somerville that could be converted to MLS after the games. They might even get Kraft to help them with that.
 
The TD Garden and Agganis are all reasonably new. The only outdated venues would be Matthews Arena and Harvard's hockey arena. Using Blue Hill would mean all brand new facilities and tracks to be built. Opening and closing ceremonies could take place at a renovated Harvard Stadium.
I don't believe Vancouver built a whole new slew of facilities. The best thing about winter is the fact that less overall venues are required.
 
LordStanleyCup2011 said:
I think a Winter Olympics would be way cooler than a Summer Olympics anyways.

On a website Im doing a game in which I submit an application and I apply for the 2024 olympics. Send me a PM on here if you can help me out.

http://www.gamesbids.com/forums/topic/21173-2024-summer-olympic-applicants/page__st__100
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Well that's just preference. And when your handle is LordStanleyCup2011, of course you care about the Winter Olympics more than Summer. Personally, I think Summer would be cooler and I think it would bring more prestige to Boston than Winter. Though in terms of motivation for infrastructure building, I guess both are good enough motivators.
 
Maybe not a good investment, but Greece has a couple of other issues going on too.
 
Post Athens and Beijing Olympic failures are well documented. So much so, in fact, that London placed special emphasis to ensure that it doesn't end up in the same boat. Time will tell, of course. Barcelona is also a better example of successful integration of venues / village into existing city scape.
 
KentXie said:
Except London already failed or close to failing.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/...e-ghost-town-london-out-of-the-gold-rush?lite
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I remember seeing a report on the news about that the other night. All the local spots are completely dead while the generic shopping megamall they built next to the stadium/village is packed (overcapacity every day since it opened). It's failure for the entire rest of the city (that was promised economic prosperity beyond their wildest dreams) to an epic degree. This is the problem with the Olympics. It's about the "Olympic bubble" and not about the city.
 
7743885712_b61a57a922.jpg
 
To point out, when the Olympics have a team of inspectors fining anyone who tries to use any wording like the "London Olympics" - basically keeping anyone from advertising unless they are one of the major corporate sponsors - and thus any action to take advantage of the Olympics for business as well as constant striking for everyone to avoid London for fear of crushing traffic... what do you expect?

You can't expect a small business boon if they are not allowed do anything to bring the Olympic people in as well as telling everyone to stay home.

The irony of telling everyone to stay home or face mass congestion and gridlock while expecting everyone to come out and spend.

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The biggest infrastructure mistake Athens, Beijing, and other examples like Motreal is spending lavishly to build entirely new buildings. They built them not with intention to make use of them afterwards, they are built to show off, especially Beijing.

Boston is different because we might be able to get away from building that much crap without use. Unlike China, we do not have a bone to put together the best show of all time to the world regardless of consequences. We don't have the lacking of facilities (and a lesser degree to prove something) meaning a huge capital investment requirement of Greece. At the same time, we have a ton of sport teams and universities with sport teams with venues already here.

In short, we don't have a need to overspend to show off or have to overspend by building everything from scratch because we lack the athletic infrastructure.

Boston have the advantage of pent up infrastructure needs. We have a soccer team that wants a stadium. We have universities that would love new dorms and new/renovated facilities for their sports. We have a subway system that begs for any excuse to replace its age trains, screw up electrical grid, screwed up signal system, and undeserved areas.

Of course, all of the above can be made null if we had an Olympics and decided to build all brand new facilities ignore existing ones and away from our local teams and school teams to use them and decide to just advertise everyone to avoid using the MBTA during the games instead of improving it.

And alas, it doesn't matter. Because it is not happening.
 
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