Journal checkyoulater's Journal: Great News! No Olympics for Toronto! 1
For those not in the know, Vancouver has been awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics. For the record, I am totally against the Olympics ever being in Canada again, unless done at Calgary. However, most people seem to think it is a good idea, so whatever. I was hoping that Salzburg, Austria would win, until my friend told me something very important:
Toronto narrowly lost out on the 2008 games to Beijing. Another good bid proposal by Toronto would surely win. Luckily, the IOC would never do 2 consecutive games in the same country. Yay Toronto!
I don't believe all the hype about making profits, adding to the local infrastructure, blah, blah, tourism, blah, blah. The fact is that Toronto has been royally screwed by the Province with downloading of services, poorly funded transit, closing hospitals and schools, and not to mention property tax increases. This is a city that wants to spend billions of dollars to host a sporting event that isn't even about sports anymore? I'd much rather see that money go to transit, education, even health care. Heck, I'd rather use the money to buy new textbooks for every school in the province than give one cent to Olympic movement. A great source of information (although quite dated now) used to be Bread Not Circuses.
Good luck Vancouver, and all of BC for that matter. I would imagine that the Province will be on the hook for any costs that get out of hand.
One final question. Why do countries like Canada and Austria need to build new facilities to host Olympics? Why spend ~2 billion to build things in Vancouver when Calgary already has everything built (and paid for!)? The same goes for Austria. Why build new facilities in Salzburg when Innsbruck has everything you need? How much would it cost to host the games at Calgary? Maybe 20 or 30 million for upgrades. Sounds a hell of a lot better than 1.89 billion.
FWIW (Score:2)
That said, I am glad it is two hours from me, across the national border, than in my city.