The Future of The Olympics

[Lexicus]

We're talking about Earth here right?

I guess if you take corruption and elite theft for granted it's easy to focus on all the pageantry and stuff

 

[warpus]

One thing that I find so incredibly stupid is the way North American broadcasters tally up the medals. They add up ALL THE MEDALS and rank countries based on the total..

So stupid. Do it the IOC way, that's how the rest of the world does it. It's not ideal, but it's a lot less stupid.

I get why it's done, it makes the U.S. and Canada look better. But c'mon

 

[metalhead]

I guess if you take corruption and elite theft for granted it's easy to focus on all the pageantry and stuff

Now you're getting it. Well, I don't care much for pageantry or glorification of athletics, but I don't need to find athletes "heroic" or some such nonsense in order to enjoy watching them compete. Even after watching this stuff for 30+ years, I'm amazed these people even manage to train themselves to do some of this stuff without killing themselves.

In the grand scheme of things, a few billion in waste and corruption and graft every couple of years, most of the time involving some other country's coffers, just isn't worth caring about. Not when there isn't anything which realistically can be done to change it.

 

[Lexicus]

In the grand scheme of things, a few billion in waste and corruption and graft every couple of years, most of the time involving some other country's coffers, just isn't worth caring about. Not when there isn't anything which realistically can be done to change it.

I don't think you really understand the extent of the problem. It's not just graft, waste, and corruption. People living in the areas that the Olympics descend on get absolutely shafted. It is a serious injustice and handwaving like this it is kind of gross tbh. Start by pushing for mechanisms by which at least some of the wealth created by the Olympics goes to benefit the "losers" of the Olympics.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I don't think you really understand the extent of the problem. It's not just graft, waste, and corruption. People living in the areas that the Olympics descend on get absolutely shafted. It is a serious injustice and handwaving like this it is kind of gross tbh. Start by pushing for mechanisms by which at least some of the wealth created by the Olympics goes to benefit the "losers" of the Olympics.

To the best of my knowledge the only person on the board who lives in a city that the Olympics have "descended on" in recent memory is Arwon in Sydney, and he doesn't seem to think he got shafted. I already mentioned the benefits that Bakersfield still enjoys just from being an outlier of the 84 games, and I don't think there is a pervasive "we got shafted" residue in LA.

 

[Lexicus]

To the best of my knowledge the only person on the board who lives in a city that the Olympics have "descended on" in recent memory is Arwon in Sydney, and he doesn't seem to think he got shafted. I already mentioned the benefits that Bakersfield still enjoys just from being an outlier of the 84 games, and I don't think there is a pervasive "we got shafted" residue in LA.

Yeah, relatively well-off white people in developed countries are not typically the ones getting shafted by the Olympics.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/olympics-poor-rio-atlanta_us_57aa27a2e4b0db3be07bde67

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yeah, relatively well-off white people in developed countries are not typically the ones getting shafted by the Olympics.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/olympics-poor-rio-atlanta_us_57aa27a2e4b0db3be07bde67

So, we should make hosting the Olympics an opportunity for strictly strong economy predominantly white nations? That sounds fair.

 

[Lexicus]

So, we should make hosting the Olympics an opportunity for strictly strong economy predominantly white nations? That sounds fair.

No, as I hinted in a few posts in this thread already, we should look at ways to make the Olympics more equitable and cut down on the injustices. If you read that article you will note it also discusses what happened to poor black people in Atlanta when that city hosted the games:

The apartment building, now known as the Techwood Homes Historic District, is the only one still standing today of the 22 units that once made up the housing project. Atlanta tore down most of Techwood and the neighboring Clark Howell complex to make way for the 1996 Olympics. That destruction forced as many as 4,000 people out of their homes, according to the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions.

They weren’t the only public housing complexes Atlanta demolished and redeveloped to prepare for the games. The city relocated 6,000 residents of public housing in the lead-up to the Olympics and rapid gentrification after the games displaced another 24,000 people, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions said in its report.

What happened in Rio was of course even worse. @metalhead this is the kind of stuff I'm mainly talking about. The graft isn't even worth mentioning compared to the development bonanza (which, in essence, means uprooting poor people's lives so that rich people can have more shiny things to look at) that the Olympics creates. Think two decades of gentrification distilled into a few years. I'm not sure if you consider gentrification a problem but maybe comparing it to that will get you more on my wavelength.

 

[sophie]

To the best of my knowledge the only person on the board who lives in a city that the Olympics have "descended on" in recent memory is Arwon in Sydney, and he doesn't seem to think he got shafted. I already mentioned the benefits that Bakersfield still enjoys just from being an outlier of the 84 games, and I don't think there is a pervasive "we got shafted" residue in LA.

WIM lives in Rio, pretty much the poster-child for horribly destructive and wasteful Olympic money-pits, and he has made his feelings about the Olympics quite apparent.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Were the Techwood projects really a place that people mourned over being forced out of?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

WIM lives in Rio, pretty much the poster-child for horribly destructive and wasteful Olympic money-pits, and he has made his feelings about the Olympics quite apparent.

True, but WIM has made his feelings about general corruption and conditions in Rio quite apparent, and it's hard to isolate the Olympics as a particularly low point in that landscape.

 

[Commodore]

They add up ALL THE MEDALS and rank countries based on the total..

Because that makes more sense. Tallying just the golds and then using silvers and bronzes as tie breakers is what makes no sense. I mean, are you really going to tell me that a country that only came away with one gold medal did better than a country that came away with 5 silvers and 10 bronzes?

Personally, I would just assign a point value to each medal with golds being worth 3 points, silver 2 points, and bronze 1 point and the country who scores the most medal points would take the top rank.

 

[warpus]

Because that makes more sense. Tallying just the golds and then using silvers and bronzes as tie breakers is what makes no sense. I mean, are you really going to tell me that a country that only came away with one gold medal did better than a country that came away with 5 silvers and 10 bronzes?

Personally, I would just assign a point value to each medal with golds being worth 3 points, silver 2 points, and bronze 1 point and the country who scores the most medal points would take the top rank.

Neither system makes 100% sense though! Are you trying to tell me that a country winning 17 bronze and 0 gold is "better" than a country that wins 16 gold?

I mean, obviously the way the U.S. and Canada do it so that they end up higher and feel better about themselves. If this way was better, then everybody would be displaying medal counts like this, but as far as I know only 2 countries do.

The system you suggest is obvoiusly the one to go with. But if we're not doing that, it makes more sense to stick to what the IOC does and whate very single country on the planet does, except for us.

 

[stinkubus]

Contrarian hot take: Trying to determine which country "wins" the Olympics using a scheme tied to medal count is completely antithetical to the spirit upon which the modern games were founded.

 

[Lexicus]

Contrarian hot take: Trying to determine which country "wins" the Olympics using a scheme tied to medal count is completely antithetical to the spirit upon which the modern games were founded.

Exactly, it's supposed to be all about the rent extraction, not who "wins"!

 

[Commodore]

Trying to determine which country "wins" the Olympics using a scheme tied to medal count is completely antithetical to the spirit upon which the modern games were founded.

Sure, but the spirit upon which the modern games are founded is antithetical to innate competitive nature of sports in general.

 

[Lexicus]

Sure, but the spirit upon which the modern games are founded is antithetical to innate competitive nature of sports in general.

I don't know if competition is "innately" part of the nature of sports. I swam for a lot of years, and I never really felt competitive with anyone else. I just wanted to beat my own times, I didn't really care about coming first place or beating anyone else.

 

[Commodore]

I just wanted to beat my own times,

That's still competition. You were competing with yourself.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Sure, but the spirit upon which the modern games are founded is antithetical to innate competitive nature of sports in general.

Not really. If I were to compete in the Olympics I wouldn't be "competing for my country," but I'd be fully exercising my "innate competitive nature."

 

[Lexicus]

If you want to see it that way.