Originally Posted by P50sundevil

They should really just quit giving the Olympics to places that don't already have a capable infrastructure. It isn't feasible to construct an entire city and the appropriate infrastructure, transport, venues, and so on, for a two-week sporting event. They're spending billions constructing something which will never receive that sort of use again. Brazil will have all of the same problems, added with the fact that they're even more incompetent. Some of the FIFA venues for this summer are completely screwed (one likely unable to complete in time), they botched their transport upgrades and will be using tents instead of terminals (as promised), one key rail line hasn't even been started, and there's already a massive shortage of acceptable hotels...how are they supposed to run an Olympics?

The IOC should only consider applicant cities with appropriate infrastructure already in place, especially with a sufficient number of hotel rooms already built. Building loads of new hotels that won't be used again is ridiculous. Sure, there can be leeway given when improvements or upgrades need to be made, but as in the case of Sochi where nearly all of the infrastructure had to be created for these games, it becomes far too difficult to complete on-time and becomes unsustainable when they'll be left to rot after the events.

But none of this will happen, because the IOC doesn't care when countries spend more and more to one-up the last, not to mention the IOC is as corrupt as the next couple of Olympics hosts. $50 billion to host a two-week event is shameful in countries like Russia or Brazil with such high poverty levels. It seems like the IOC thinks they're doing them a favor as charity cases, and they're generating investment in the infrastructure to improve the lives of the locals. Bollocks. Sochi is Putin's Berchdesgaden (where Eagle's Nest is) and the money spent on these improvements will not improve the lives of 99.7% of Russians -- the 0.3% being those who took their share of bribes/siphoned money from the budget, or the few people who happen to live in the area who aren't confined to Dagestan.

But I digress...