View Single Post
Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2010-03-11, 21:41

Quote:
Originally Posted by Banana View Post
Robo,

Wasn't there an outcry over how IOC had Alanta then SLC and um, one more that slips my mind in relatively short time?
The outcry was more about the SLC bid bribery scandal. While admittedly quick for a country, it wasn't at all an unusually short period of time for a continent to host two games -- Europe's gone "back to back" twice in this decade, with 2004-6 and 2012-14. Traditionally, the Summer Games are considered separate from the Winter Games. Hence, North America has not hosted a Summer Games since 1996, and won't until at least 2020 2024 2028? 2032? Who knows.

Luca is on the nose with the IOC's apparent Eurocentrism. "The Americas" only get one ring on the Olympic flag, &c. No other continent gets to go back to back (to back to back...) like they do. Heck, super-populous Asia (which is definitely not Europe ) only gets to host the games once a decade (1988, 1998, 2008, hopefully 2018) and they just have to make do with whichever Games falls on the "8" that decade. I "get" that the Olympics started in Europe, and will always sort of hail from the European tradition, but for all the posturing about it being a "global movement" each event sure seems to take place in Europe every other time, with the other half of the events split between, um, everyone else.

That might have been okay when "everyone else" was the US, Canada, and maybe Australia. Add in Mexico and New Zealand and, oh, three entire continents, and it doesn't really work any more. They're still acting like it's 1960 or something. (Hopefully they don't act like it's actually 1960, and award the games to Rome. )

Quote:
Originally Posted by Banana
Anyway, excuse me while I prepare to stake a claim on a piece of real estate for free...
?

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
  quote