another option would be is to make the Diamond League an even bigger competition, perhaps with a different name, in the year when there is no OG or WC.
Pan Am Games, European Games, Asian Games, Olympic Games, etc require dozens of venues, and Billions of Dollars. Only Los Angeles and Tokyo from what I hear have year around sports leagues to fully utilize the venues.
The All Africa games are still going strong. Because they cost much less to host
African athletes aren't picky about facilities. Athletes crash in school dormitories not in an Olympic village.
Training facilities are whatever is available in the school. Some even train on the roadside.
I wrote about this topic about a year ago in a Substack blog post "Pomp and Difficult Circumstances - Is It Time to reconsider Olympic Venues?" The idea was to spread logical sport groupings among different locations to avoid some of the problems of staging the Games as it is now done. I mentioned the CG award to Victoria as a model, spreading sports among several areas. Clearly it missed the mark as far as cost savings is concerned:
If the Olympic movement is to thrive and not merely survive in a changing world, it is imperative to weigh financial and other, perhaps less tangible costs against the model of an Olympic festival involving more but smaller scale venues. The Commonwealth Games provides a glimpse into a more sustainable Olympic future. Held every four years amongst the UK and its former colonies and featuring a panoply of sports similar to the Olympics, the governing body Commonwealth Games Federation had not secured an able host as of early 2022 as numerous bidders – Perth and Adelaide, Australia; Cardiff, Wales (UK); Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta (Canada) fell by the wayside, due at least in part by cost concerns. Sounds familiar, does it not? However, the Australian state of Victoria began discussion with the Federation in February 2022 and the 2026 version of the Games will feature 16 sports, spread among five regions and cities. The plan gives us a glimpse into what a dispersed Olympic Games might look like, but we will not know if it is successful until it is over, and all the negatives and positives have been closely examined.
I wrote about this topic about a year ago in a Substack blog post "Pomp and Difficult Circumstances - Is It Time to reconsider Olympic Venues?" The idea was to spread logical sport groupings among different locations to avoid some of the problems of staging the Games as it is now done. I mentioned the CG award to Victoria as a model, spreading sports among several areas. Clearly it missed the mark as far as cost savings is concerned:
If the Olympic movement is to thrive and not merely survive in a changing world, it is imperative to weigh financial and other, perhaps less tangible costs against the model of an Olympic festival involving more but smaller scale venues. The Commonwealth Games provides a glimpse into a more sustainable Olympic future. Held every four years amongst the UK and its former colonies and featuring a panoply of sports similar to the Olympics, the governing body Commonwealth Games Federation had not secured an able host as of early 2022 as numerous bidders – Perth and Adelaide, Australia; Cardiff, Wales (UK); Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta (Canada) fell by the wayside, due at least in part by cost concerns. Sounds familiar, does it not? However, the Australian state of Victoria began discussion with the Federation in February 2022 and the 2026 version of the Games will feature 16 sports, spread among five regions and cities. The plan gives us a glimpse into what a dispersed Olympic Games might look like, but we will not know if it is successful until it is over, and all the negatives and positives have been closely examined.
Victoria's regional model was never about cost savings. If the main idea was to save costs they'd have just hosted the whole thing in Melbourne which has everything already. The whole point was to spend money developing the regions and when they discovered that their regional model was unviable they abandonded hosting entirely.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
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