The Olympics

Holli Cook

The Olympics the one event each year that every person becomes attached to their TV. We spend hours watching the events making sure to record it when it’s on to make sure we don’t miss anything. Hours upon hours are wasted as we watch to see if USA can take gold in each event. Yet the joy we receive from watching it comes with a cost. Little did we know that the money that it has taken just to host these Olympics has cost over $50 billion dollars. When deciding to host it in Russia the only look anyone saw was that they had the perfect climate right now to host it. Yet no one looked to see if the city they were going to be held was ready to host so many countries and people.  The money started to be needed when Russia had to build “highway, a high-speed train line. Electric power stations and an entire series of resort villages in the Caucasus Mountains, where the alpine sport events will take place” (Watson).

Many can see this as necessary events needed to host this event, yet one cannot help but to ask or even think was the road work, new buildings being built, highways, was any of this taken into consideration when letting Russia host this event.  When looking at the money that it has taken to build the Olympics over the years Russia has used the most money over the summer Olympics in Beijing that cost $10 billion dollars less. According to Think Progress Sochi Olympic will Cost more than every other winter Olympic combined said “Sochi will spend five times more than the Chinese did in 2008. Take Summer Games out of the equation and Sochi looks even worse: according to research from a Dutch newspaper, Sochi’s cost will total more than every pervious Winter Olympics combined” (Waldron).  When originally looking at how much Russia was going to spend was $12 billion. According to Think Progress Sochi Olympic will Cost more than every other winter Olympic combined said “the average cost overrun of Games between 1960 and 2012, the researchers found, was 179 percent in real terms” (Waldron).

Now when looking at that it means that every Games have gone over budget but Russia after doing the calculations are 425% overrun, that has been be most any Game has gone over.  Later on when reading the article from Think Progress all the questions one has asked why did Russia get to host the Games if there are so much problems and money being put into it and it still not being done has been answered. Russia was given the games as they sold that the Games would be a chance for a “new Russia”. Yet could this really actually happen according to Think Progress Sochi Olympic will Cost more than every other winter Olympic combined said “If the messages these events are supposed to sell aren’t delivered and if the benefits that purportedly follow don’t, the question is whether they are worth their cost” (Waldron).  This means what if it doesn’t create that “new Russia” and can really the Games do that? To fix something that is broken means to fix the main problem and in reality Russia just hasn’t stepped up to the plate to fix their economy, to fix the scarcity of cops school means of transportation ect. so they use what is Nationally know as a way to try. They create a bigger problem for other economies that help fund all the money they are using form the Games.

http://thinkprogress.org/sports/2014/02/03/3239131/sochi-olympics-cost-winter-olympics-combined/

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/03/travel/sochi-olympic-hotels/

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