I'm Just Not Into The Olympics

[teletail]

I'm just not feeling it. I mean, I appreciate the work and dedication and talent it takes to get there but THIS one just doesn't grab me.

Words cannot express how little I care about the olympics.

 

[bgmacaw]

This one's for you!

 

[memorex]

I only watch a few events, like women's beach volleyball, otherwise, I don't care.

 

[ElJay370]

I used to almost always watch the Olympic games with passing interest...

But I can't really justify it this time around.

These games should've never happened. For reasons that should be obvious. The IOC is operating from a place of callous greed and hubris.

No, thanks.

 

[stomped box]

This is the year it became very uncool to care about the outcome.

 

[viking]

How about just fixing this forum ?

Easy , just ban everyone over 50......

 

[Controller]

Thank you for remining me why I always turned off the first few seconds of any carpenters song before it stretched me into blandamonium. This is probably one of the biggest reasons I gravitated to Hendrix instead of this dark drab music.. Please do not play any more carpenters music as I still need to pick up my anti-nausia medicine. Thanks in advance.

But hey, if you want to get into a competition of Nausea, GAME ON!

Ok, no more Carpenters, i promise. Then there's Paul Anka

 

[Mark E Rhodes]

I'm just not feeling it. I mean, I appreciate the work and dedication and talent it takes to get there but THIS one just doesn't grab me.

Same here.
Though it's not just this one.
I watched the Olympics as a kid but haven't been interested since the US hockey team knocked off the Soviet team in, what, 1980?

Back in 2000 I made a big change in my life that indirectly resulted with me going without a TV for several years. I have one now but there are a lot of things I watched before that I don't bother to now, among them: the Olympics, basketball, and baseball. (I never watched soccer or hockey.) I came to realize I'm not really a sports fan; I'm a football fan. (And I watch some golf, which I didn't before.)

 

[BigDaddyLH]

I have no idea what the male and female Olympic volleyball uniforms look like though. If they're g-strings or something, then yeah, I get the controversy. And I think if a female player wants to wear shorts in lieu of traditional bikini bottoms, that should be an option.

A team was fined for doing that.

 

[Chiogtr4x]

I'm still watching them ( dig gymnastics, swimming, soccer, B-ball, other, like biking...)

But it seems like the whole point of.the Olympics is the excitement of the competition +a global audience attending the events. There's just a huge HOLE w/o the cheering crowds.

Wish they could have just postponed, but that probably screws everything up more?

* dug the Phillipino female weightlifter that won that country's first ever Gold medal! Stuff like that is cool!

 

[_MementoMori_]

A team was fined for doing that.

Well rules are rules I guess, but that seems like a pretty dumb one. Maybe the rules should be revised to allow one or two officially selected optional uniforms that cover more/less skin as the player desires. That seems like a compromise that should make everyone happy.

 

[421JAM]

After learning about how hosting the Olympics is a giant money loser for the host city, the Games have lost their luster for me. .

I'm sure this is true in some cases, but there are long-term benefits that people who make this claim aren't factoring into the equation. I live in Atlanta, and large sections of our Downtown have been entirely remade because of the 1996 Olympics. What once was a derelict warehouse district and notorious gang hotspot before the Olympics has become the crown jewel in Downtown Atlanta. This park has been hosting all sorts of large and small events every year since the Olympics. It is has attracted the College Football Hall of Fame, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, the World of Coke museum, the Georgia Aquarium, a major music venue, and a constantly growing hotel district. The athlete housing that was built has since been used as student housing, making it easier to recruit students to Georgia Tech.

Most of this would not be there today were it not for the Olympics, and all of these things pour money into the local economy. The amenities you invest in for the Olympic games don't stop making money when the games end. So it's possible the Olympics are a money loser for host cities only if they stop counting their money at the end of the closing ceremony.

 

[bgmacaw]

A team was fined for doing that.

But it was a crime they did not commit!

 

[Toto'sDad]

That's the thing about changing rules, if you keep changing them long enough, you don't have the original game left.

 

[beninma]

I'm sure this is true in some cases, but there are long-term benefits that people who make this claim aren't factoring into the equation. I live in Atlanta, and large sections of our Downtown have been entirely remade because of the 1996 Olympics. What once was a derelict warehouse district and notorious gang hotspot before the Olympics has become the crown jewel in Downtown Atlanta. This park has been hosting all sorts of large and small events every year since the Olympics. It is has attracted the College Football Hall of Fame, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, the World of Coke museum, the Georgia Aquarium, a major music venue, and a constantly growing hotel district. The athlete housing that was built has since been used as student housing, making it easier to recruit students to Georgia Tech.

Most of this would not be there today were it not for the Olympics, and all of these things pour money into the local economy. The amenities you invest in for the Olympic games don't stop making money when the games end. So it's possible the Olympics are a money loser for host cities only if they stop counting their money at the end of the closing ceremony.

Are you paying taxes on that stuff?

These problems have gotten a lot worse since 1996. I think it was the Olympics right now that we locally had a campaign to host it in Boston.

Our taxes literally would have had to go up to pay off the bills to build or repurpose a bunch of stadiums that we wouldn't need when we were done. Sure we have a bunch already, but the IOC would have made us make new ones and/or remodel the existing ones at a cost of billions. And they want purpose built facilities & infrastructure for obscure sports that are not popular in the host area.

Most of us were glad when the government listened to the public and shot down the bid.

Our derelict and crime ridden area that was targetted for olympics got rebuilt into a big corporate/tech park full of high paying jobs, unlike what would have happened if the planned sports facilities got built there.

 

[chris m.]

I'm sure this is true in some cases, but there are long-term benefits that people who make this claim aren't factoring into the equation. I live in Atlanta, and large sections of our Downtown have been entirely remade because of the 1996 Olympics. What once was a derelict warehouse district and notorious gang hotspot before the Olympics has become the crown jewel in Downtown Atlanta. This park has been hosting all sorts of large and small events every year since the Olympics. It is has attracted the College Football Hall of Fame, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, the World of Coke museum, the Georgia Aquarium, a major music venue, and a constantly growing hotel district. The athlete housing that was built has since been used as student housing, making it easier to recruit students to Georgia Tech.

Most of this would not be there today were it not for the Olympics, and all of these things pour money into the local economy. The amenities you invest in for the Olympic games don't stop making money when the games end. So it's possible the Olympics are a money loser for host cities only if they stop counting their money at the end of the closing ceremony.

There have been in depth economic analyses of this by a number of economists. Atlanta is one of the exceptions to the rule, and it was a long time ago. More recent games have been big net losers for the host cities. Furthermore, even when the host city manages to be a long-term winner from a broad macro-economic perspective overall, the benefits and impacts are not distributed in an equitable manner. Rather, as usual, the poor people get harmed while the rich people get richer. For example, poor people in "blighted neighborhoods" get forced to move, are inadequately compensated, and their sometimes close-knit neighborhood communities get totally destroyed as part of the relocation process.

 

[BigDaddyLH]

Well rules are rules I guess, but that seems like a pretty dumb one. Maybe the rules should be revised to allow one or two officially selected optional uniforms that cover more/less skin as the player desires. That seems like a compromise that should make everyone happy.

The rules for the men is vague, something close to "wear clothes". For the women it specifies the *size* of the bikini down to the centimetre!

Now, as a guy, I like going to the beach and enjoying the, uh, scenery. But for a sport, an Olympic sport, this is beyond sexist.

 

[421JAM]

There have been in depth economic analyses of this by a number of economists. Atlanta is one of the exceptions to the rule, and it was a long time ago. More recent games have been big net losers for the host cities. Furthermore, even when the host city manages to be a long-term winner from a broad macro-economic perspective overall, the benefits and impacts are not distributed in an equitable manner. Rather, as usual, the poor people get harmed while the rich people get richer. For example, poor people in "blighted neighborhoods" get forced to move, are inadequately compensated, and their sometimes close-knit neighborhood communities get totally destroyed as part of the relocation process.

I don’t dispute any of that.

In many cases, there is no benefit to hosting the Olympics. For example, a city like London has absolutely nothing to gain from hosting.

Nothing has ever been distributed in an equitable manner in our society, so I find that an unconvincing argument against cities trying to develop economically.

 

[trapdoor2]

Well, I'm enjoying the Gymnastics. I DVR and then FF thru the commercials. Sure, there are Oly. sports I don't watch: Soccer, soccer and, um Football. Roundball and Rugby too. A lot of the stuff I FF thru just stopping to see the highlights. Several of the sports simply haven't found a way to successfully be portrayed via video. Fencing, for example. The human eye just can't see it happen via video. Maybe advances in high-speed cameras can help.

Sexism is rampant, of course. Hopefully those rules will change. The participants have already started to buck the rules and even though the one team got slapped with a stiff fine, they'll never pay a dime themselves. I'd contribute to that fund in a heartbeat. I'd also contribute to buy more acreage for the men's diving team swimwear. Board shorts or go home!

Building specialist venues for the games is a losing proposition. With the speed of today's electronic transmissions and the threat of the "P word", I think each sport should be held in preferred venues around the globe. No more single-city Olympics...make them global. For example, have the Bicycle racing in France, Gymnastics in Hungary, Track and Field in the US, Baseball in Japan, Rowing in the UK, Surfing in Tahiti, Sailing with the Kiwis, Swimming in Oz, etc, etc. Let them all compete in the same two-week timeframe.

 

[uriah1]

The skulls were cool. I like it all. Not sure about golf. Rather watch javelin thrower.