04/20/24
May 18, 2004
And then there were five.: The IOC has whittled the list of possible host cities for the 2012 games down to New York, Paris, London, Madrid and Moscow leaving only broken hearts in Istanbul, Leipzig and the other candidates. The final decision will be made next year.
The current trend is for a 'lympics that "belongs" to a region much more than to a city Stadium, court, and track venues aren't very had to find and are easy to locate in one place, but the sports that require geographic features and/or a lot of space need to be more spread out, because mountains and whitewater rapids and good sailing water don't tend to be located in cities...lot of other stuff that I'm probably overlooking, too. Anyway, I've heard Lake Placid called the last of the small-town Olympics, which I wonder about. I'm sure it was that, but more significantly, it may have been the last of the closely-located Olympics. To have another one, it would pretty much have to a)be a winter games and b)be based in a small town. You can't move a mountain to a city, but you can build an ice rink in a small town. There are lots of reasons why nobody would do so any more, but you could. Anyway, I ramble. The summer sports with the most demanding location needs are probably:
- Bicycle racing -- there just aren't a lot of these tracks
- Sailing -- can't just do this anywhere that there's water
- Whitewater kayaking and canoeing
- Equestrian events
- Rowing
posted by lil_brown_bat at 12:07 PM on May 18, 2004
if the games came here it would be more like the Metropolitan Tri-State Area games, than the NYC games. there's a good amount of existing facilities including colleges in Jersey, Long Island, Westchester, Connecticut. rowing probably wouldn't be a problem. equestrian definitely wouldn't be a problem. not sure what exactly is required in the other venues you mentioned but i'm sure it's not going to be a big problem. that being said, i'm not sure i want them here. yeah, it would be cool to have the opportunity to see the games, but logistically i don't know how you can pull it off without majorly inconveniencing a lot of peoples' lives and businesses in the area. i guess it depends on what's going on in the world at the time, but if things don't change much for the better i can see it being a police state.
posted by goddam at 12:37 PM on May 18, 2004
we might get another Hudson river crossing out of the deal, tho.
posted by garfield at 01:22 PM on May 18, 2004
I can only imagine the security bill by 2012. Will any locale be able to afford it? OTOH, I can only tell you that when SF was eliminated from this competition I breathed a huge sigh of relief and that was without considering the cost (dollars, inconvenience, etc) of security.
posted by billsaysthis at 08:14 PM on May 18, 2004
Give it to New York. They'd do a great job and it could be like a sort of rebirth. I bet it would kick ass.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 12:55 AM on May 19, 2004
According to this Fox Sports AU article, the IOC also released an evaluation at the same time that ranks the remaining contenders: 1. Paris 2. Madrid 3. London 4. New York (distant) 5. Moscow It's going to Europe, folks, and don't be surprised when they announce it next year.
posted by worldcup2002 at 06:56 PM on May 19, 2004
Personally, I was rooting for Rio, but apparently there were security issues. New York seems unlikely, though, given that the winter Olympics will be in Canada and they don't like to have them be on the same continent. Also interesting is that 2012 might be the first summer games in years without baseball. (earlier SpoFi thread here)