No. Get rid of the corrupt IOC officials who use athletes as pons to foster their decadent existance.
The Olympics are a great celebration of humanity and world peace through athletic competition. The best athletes from around the world - it’s the greatest show on earth.
Most of your arguments can be mounted against any significant international competition. In the amateur era the Olympics were the premier international sporting event. The strongest argument against them is that which can be levelled at any professional sport today - corruption of the sporting ideal. At its core is unacknowledged doping. But, as we see, that isn't a problem for either the athletes or their fans.
Stop wrote:
The Olympics are expensive, leave the countries that host them with a huge deficit and a bunch of useless white elephant facilities, and increasingly cannot be hosted anywhere but in a few countries. Populations are turning against having the games and don’t want their cities to bid when people are struggling financially. They are often accompanied by human rights abuses - such as clearing out poorer areas - increased policing and surveillance, and are heavily corrupt.
Beyond that though, they also have an outsize profile - an athlete can set records, win world championships, but if you didn’t win this one specific event every four years you’re seen as a failure. It’s a lot of unnecessary pressure for an arbitrary event. The Olympics also don’t bring sustained viewership to sports and most sports would be better off investing in better promoting their world championships, which are much more accessible to hold.
The ideology behind the Olympics is outdated - first they were conceived as a demonstration of European superiority, it shifted in the Cold War to proxy warfare through sports, and then the idea of global unity through competing together. Those billions could be much better spent on global initiatives that actually promote peace and unity not just for elite athletes. There’s no indication that emphasis on elite sports leads to more fitness in the general population and money would be better spent making trails and facilities available to everyone. And perhaps without the Olympics there’d be less incentive to drug use if the idea that success at this one event defines athletic careers.
Is it time to stop investing in an expensive, exclusive Olympics?
Agreed. After all, don't we have WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS in each sport? Makes it redundant at a very high $$$$
Track and field would become much more niche with much less money for the runners if the Olympics didn't exist. There would also be fewer people aspiring to be professional runners and therefore fewer records being set. Sure advocate for the end of the Olympics; just know it will sound the death knell for your sport.
They have to stop adding sports and start taking some away. It's just too big.
Yes get rid of them no cares
No more insane $100B money for white elephant venues for one time use. We should have a single permanent city and hold the Olys each year split into 4 competitions: T&F, Cross Country, Marathon, and Winter Outdoor T&F. The city should have warn weather 365 days per year. The city should already have today at least 20 years of the same sport using each constructed venue for the sport by national and local events (not including Olympic qualifying and demonstration events).
Yes. The Olympics is an unenlightened, outdated notion. Patriotism only benefits the state. One’s citizenship is arbitrary… no one has control over where their parents happen to live when they are born. What matters is the decades of personal sacrifice and discipline to get to an elite level. This has nothing to do with your citizenship.
This is especially true since a person can be dual citizenship and switch “teams” at will. Or, spend their entire life in a different country only to compete for a country they don’t even remember simply because they were born there. They might as well create teams by religion… it has about as much to do with success.
Earthling wrote:
Yes. The Olympics is an unenlightened, outdated notion. Patriotism only benefits the state. One’s citizenship is arbitrary… no one has control over where their parents happen to live when they are born. What matters is the decades of personal sacrifice and discipline to get to an elite level. This has nothing to do with your citizenship.
This is especially true since a person can be dual citizenship and switch “teams” at will. Or, spend their entire life in a different country only to compete for a country they don’t even remember simply because they were born there. They might as well create teams by religion… it has about as much to do with success.
Boycotts and country exclusion for political reasons should be a crime. This is only made possibly by the outdated idea of having countries compete against each other. Cancel the Olympics.
No. But Russia and other nonsense like team ROC needs to be banned for at least 50 years.