1976 always hangs over the Olympics
Dire tales about the 1976 Olympics are always evoked as other summer Olympics are in the news, but this story recalls that the Montreal games actually made money and left some useful sports facilities still being used.
Adam 11:47 on 2012/07/20 Permalink
Made money? We only paid off the Olympic Stadium a few years ago at a cost of over $1.5 billion. And that’s just one facility! I think they “made money” only if you pretend that the only costs were those incurred during the Olympics themselves.
Kate 12:01 on 2012/07/20 Permalink
Take it up with Dick Pound, that’s who they’re quoting.
Some people clearly made money off our games – not necessarily the public purse.
Taylor C. Noakes 12:43 on 2012/07/20 Permalink
Dick Pound knows what he’s talking about.
The Stadium costs were way overboard, but the indirect stimulus, the housing developments and what the Olympics led to afterwards in terms of construction, economic development etc, yeah – it wasn’t a great success, but no where near as bad as most people think.
Ultimately, the major point is this: unlike other recent Olympiads (Beijing and Athens come to mind), I think we got a better deal in that our facilities are used, even the Big O. It’s just that it’s not being as used as we’d like.
Funny thing is that now we have everything we need to do an Olympiad on the cheap, just like LA84, the most successful (money-wise) Olympic games, ever.
Think about it. Two airports, Métro, commuter trains, Big O, Olympic Pool, Jarry Park, Bell Ctr, Claude Robillard Ctr, CEPSUM, rowing basin, not to mention the Palais des Congres and way, way more hotels than we had back in 76.
What’s left to build would be comparatively very little. If we bid and won, we’d pull in a big cash cow.
Kate 12:58 on 2012/07/20 Permalink
Taylor, I think if we made a new Olympic bid we’d risk discovering (or “discovering”) that the existing stadium is too unsafe so we’d need to build a new one, either on the same spot (involving the serious expense of demolishing or remodelling Roger Taillibert’s masterpiece) or somewhere else. And our Olympic village was sold into private hands long ago.
Don’t forget, you can’t conceptualize a new project here without making sure that big plum profits fall into the usual hands. A project being a bargain is no recommendation.
qatzelok 20:01 on 2012/07/21 Permalink
Let’s spend all the province’s tax money hosting upper class athletes from all over the world so they can feel important and special on the backs of social programs.
Who needs good services when you can see semi-literate suburbanite princes say motivational things between commercials on TV.