Bloomberg: Let's give the Olympics a permanent home

Sochi; source Google earth

Sochi - While athletes gather for the most expensive Olympics of all time, an old idea is once again vying for attention: to find a permanent home for the Games, wrote the news site Bloomberg.
Russia has spent about $50 billion to build a ski resort in Sochi from the ground up: not just slopes and snow machines, but also roads, railways, hotels, and even a power plant. This is a significant achievement not only because the winter Olympics are about one-third the scale of the summer ones, yet London spent only about $14.5 billion on the 2012 Summer Olympics.
There is no doubt that this Olympics will also bring its share of unforgettable memories that go beyond a badly built toilet. But it is already clear not only that this bid should never have been accepted, but also that the entire selection process is irrevocably wasteful and corrupt.
Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes that his investment will pay off in the long run and that Sochi will become Russia's Courchevel or Aspen, attracting skiers from all over the world. Too many countries hosting the Olympics have relied on this wishful thinking that has rarely come to fruition.
The question is: If it makes sense to build a large ski resort around Sochi - a subtropical resort on the Black Sea on the western edge of the war-torn North Caucasus - why wasn't it done long ago?
The excessive costs of the Olympics can cause real economic damage to the national economy and have little impact on the quality of the competitions. Canada's Montreal paid off its debts from hosting the summer Olympics in 1976 for 30 years. Greece spent $16 billion for the 2004 Games in Athens and added to a pile of debt that contributed to its economic collapse six years later - and the Olympic venues lay idle and decaying.
Russia, unlike Greece or Montreal, can afford to pay. Nevertheless, the one-time costs for a country that needs a lot of development investments and is facing slowing economic growth are hardly justifiable.
The selection process for the Olympic venue has descended into an auction where individual bidders outbid each other with offers for the biggest and most conspicuous spectacle. And every time, voices from sports economists and the athletes themselves call for a single, permanent venue for the Summer and Winter Olympics.
Ancient Olympia, where the Games were held for almost 12 centuries starting in 776 BC, is often proposed as a permanent venue for the Summer Olympics. The Greek government itself offered to build it on 505 acres near Olympia in 1980. The Winter Games could be held in Japan or Switzerland.
In these permanent locations, investments in sports facilities and other necessary infrastructure would make financial sense. These sites would become neutral ground, much like the UN in New York, and their operation would be financed by profits from ticket sales, television rights, and merchandise.
Another reason to find a permanent home for the Games is politics. Sochi has drawn attention to controversial Russian laws against the promotion of homosexuality. The 2008 Summer Games in Beijing worried many due to China's human rights violations. Retaliatory boycotts from the United States and the then-Soviet Union in Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles four years later caused significant damage to these sporting events.
The interest of individual cities and countries wanting to host the Olympics has so far prevented change. To avoid criticism that a permanent location for the Games favors one part of the world, five permanent venues could be created - in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America - and the Games could rotate among them. This could also work.