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Games' costs can't be justified, expert says
Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun
Published: 2/28/2007
If Kevin Wamsley had his way, the 2010 Winter Olympics should have been given to Calgary, which put on the 1988 Games and which already has the necessary expensive sports infrastructure.
Instead, Vancouver is following a long line of Olympic cities in building expensive facilities that will never repay the citizens who fund them, said Wamsley, the former director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario.
Wamsley, who continues to do research for the centre, one of the only independent academic institutions in the world that studies the Olympic movement, thinks the billions of public dollars invested Olympic sporting facilities every time the summer and winter Games are awarded can't be justified economically.
Vancouver, with its $4 billion-plus worth of sporting facilities, highway improvements, the convention centre expansion and rapid transit line, is a prime example.
"I think for a 16-day festival, the amounts of money being spent on infrastructure, given resources, are well out of proportion to the significance of the event," he said Tuesday.
Dick Pound, Canada's permanent member of the International Olympic Committee, disagrees.
"For a guy who set up the Olympic studies centre for a number of years, he's astonishingly negative," Pound said, noting the IOC wants to give the Olympic Games to other cities as a way of spurring sport development.
Wamsley believes the winners in this global game of elite sporting events is the International Olympic Committee and the corporations that support it, given that they generate billions of dollars in revenues for what is essentially a non-profit organization.
"The Olympic Games depends upon corporations, end of story. There is not a public infrastructure that could support the Olympics in its current form. But the problem is the public funding hasn't been any less, and they are spending ever so much more on the Olympic Games," he said.
Wamsley, an associate dean of academic studies, is visiting Vancouver as part of a tour speaking to alumni of the university.
"As a taxpayer and a Canadian, I would say we don't need another set of facilities in Western Canada," he said.
"Calgary's got the infrastructure. It would require so much less investment, and they already have the volunteer set and the organizational set and most of the national teams are there. Every two years we've got these megafacilities bouncing up all over the world, and who can use them? You can't, I can't, because we're not elite athletes."
Pound said Calgary's facilities are now nearly 25 years old and wouldn't be satisfactory for today's Olympics.
"There's a reluctance on the part of the IOC to go back to a place that has already had the Games when there are many cities in the world that have never had them," he said.
Pound says Olympic sporting facilities are now designed to be converted to public use, and the IOC doesn't want cities to build "white elephants" that are going to sit empty. As examples he cited Vancouver's curling, ski and hockey venues, which will all have popular followings. Richmond's elite long-track speed-skating oval, on the other hand, will be converted to community recreation facilities after the Games.
Pound says people who criticize corporate involvement in the Olympics "never understand that no organized sport as we know it today -- and I don't mean just the Olympics, but also the NHL -- would exist today if we depended upon government support. It is all private-sector driven."
The Olympics may spur government investments in public infrastructure like transportation, but those are facilities and services any sizeable city needs anyway, he said.
jefflee@png.canwest.com
TOO MUCH MONEY
- Kevin Wamsley says the 2
Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun
Published: 2/28/2007
If Kevin Wamsley had his way, the 2010 Winter Olympics should have been given to Calgary, which put on the 1988 Games and which already has the necessary expensive sports infrastructure.
Instead, Vancouver is following a long line of Olympic cities in building expensive facilities that will never repay the citizens who fund them, said Wamsley, the former director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario.
Wamsley, who continues to do research for the centre, one of the only independent academic institutions in the world that studies the Olympic movement, thinks the billions of public dollars invested Olympic sporting facilities every time the summer and winter Games are awarded can't be justified economically.
Vancouver, with its $4 billion-plus worth of sporting facilities, highway improvements, the convention centre expansion and rapid transit line, is a prime example.
"I think for a 16-day festival, the amounts of money being spent on infrastructure, given resources, are well out of proportion to the significance of the event," he said Tuesday.
Dick Pound, Canada's permanent member of the International Olympic Committee, disagrees.
"For a guy who set up the Olympic studies centre for a number of years, he's astonishingly negative," Pound said, noting the IOC wants to give the Olympic Games to other cities as a way of spurring sport development.
Wamsley believes the winners in this global game of elite sporting events is the International Olympic Committee and the corporations that support it, given that they generate billions of dollars in revenues for what is essentially a non-profit organization.
"The Olympic Games depends upon corporations, end of story. There is not a public infrastructure that could support the Olympics in its current form. But the problem is the public funding hasn't been any less, and they are spending ever so much more on the Olympic Games," he said.
Wamsley, an associate dean of academic studies, is visiting Vancouver as part of a tour speaking to alumni of the university.
"As a taxpayer and a Canadian, I would say we don't need another set of facilities in Western Canada," he said.
"Calgary's got the infrastructure. It would require so much less investment, and they already have the volunteer set and the organizational set and most of the national teams are there. Every two years we've got these megafacilities bouncing up all over the world, and who can use them? You can't, I can't, because we're not elite athletes."
Pound said Calgary's facilities are now nearly 25 years old and wouldn't be satisfactory for today's Olympics.
"There's a reluctance on the part of the IOC to go back to a place that has already had the Games when there are many cities in the world that have never had them," he said.
Pound says Olympic sporting facilities are now designed to be converted to public use, and the IOC doesn't want cities to build "white elephants" that are going to sit empty. As examples he cited Vancouver's curling, ski and hockey venues, which will all have popular followings. Richmond's elite long-track speed-skating oval, on the other hand, will be converted to community recreation facilities after the Games.
Pound says people who criticize corporate involvement in the Olympics "never understand that no organized sport as we know it today -- and I don't mean just the Olympics, but also the NHL -- would exist today if we depended upon government support. It is all private-sector driven."
The Olympics may spur government investments in public infrastructure like transportation, but those are facilities and services any sizeable city needs anyway, he said.
jefflee@png.canwest.com
TOO MUCH MONEY
- Kevin Wamsley says the 2