olympics

A majority are kind of "meh" about the city's bid, according to a new poll

Boston residents are not too excited about the city’s 2024 Olympic bid, according to a new poll.

In fact, the share of Boston residents “excited” about the city’s shot at hosting the Summer Olympics (48%) is almost the same as those who say they’re not excited (43%), a new survey released by Boston’s NPR news station WBUR on Tuesday found.

The poll surveyed just 500 Boston area residents after the city was named one of four identified by the United States Olympic Committee to apply to host the 2024 games, and it had a margin of error of 6.7 percent.

But the numbers will make dispiriting readers for Olympic organizers; only half of those polled said they “support” the Olympic games coming to Boston, and a full third (33%) said they are opposed to them.

The city will need more support from residents if they want to persuade the International Olympic Committee that Boston should host. For next year’s summer games in Rio de Janeiro, WBUR reports, 85% of residents supported the city’s bid.

[WBUR]

Boston will bid for the 2024 Olympics. According to many economists, Beantown will regret it if it wins

Boston wins! Boston wins!

But Boston may lose, big time.

On Thursday the U.S. Olympic Committee chose Boston as America’s bidding city for the 2024 Olympics. Beantown beat out San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles in the Olympic sweepstakes. The latter’s loss is a mild surprise, considering LA’s Olympic experience: the city has hosted the Games twice, and has plenty of venues already built. Not that Boston has no Olympic attractions. Beach volleyball in Boston Common and field hockey at Harvard Stadium sound cool. The city is pretty compact. Hopefully they’ll find some use for Fenway Park. (Equestrian events? Yankees fans might appreciate horses crapping all over the outfield).

The host city won’t be named until 2017, and Boston’s rival bidders potentially include Rome, Casablanca, Paris, Nairobi, Doha and Berlin. While many Bostonians are excited about the the prestige and emotional lift that an Olympic win would provide, critics — like members of the No Boston Olympics opposition group — worry about the price tag. For good reason: academic research has consistently shown that for the host city, the Olympics aren’t the economic boon they’re cracked up to be. In fact, they do long-term harm.

Cities consistently spend more than the original budget projections: before the London Olympics, Will Jennings, a professor of political science and public policy at the University of Southampton, found that the average cost overrun for staging the Olympics was 200% since 1976. Boston has estimated that its bid would cost some $4.5 billion in private funding plus an additional $5 billion in regional infrastructure improvements. “That’s farcical,” says Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College, which is located some 80 miles west of Boston, and the author of the new book Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup. Organizers in London, for example, initially said the Games would cost $4 billion. The final bill came out to to $15 to $20 billion.

Zimbalist was surprised that Boston got the right to bid. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) just passed reforms seeking to control the spiraling costs of hosting the Games: he’s convinced that Los Angeles, with its existing Olympic infrastructure, made the most economic sense. Boston’s biggest challenge will be building an Olympic stadium to host the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as track and field. Zimbalist is also skeptical of Boston’s plan to utilize its many universities to host events and athletes in an Olympics village. It’s one thing for MIT to have fields for archery, and for other universities to have pools. It’s another to convert these places into full-fledged Olympic venues, with seating and infrastructure to support a flood of spectators.

In his book, Zimbalist cites stacks of research showing that the Games aren’t worth it. The Olympics, cities are often told, will boost tourism. One econometric study, however, showed that when other factors were controlled for, Atlanta saw no statistically significant change in retail sales, hotel occupancy, or airport traffic during the 1996 Olympics. During the Beijing Olympics in August of 2008, hotel bed nights dropped 39% compared to the prior year. For the 2000 Sydney Olympics, two researchers concluded that “in terms of purely measurable economic variables the [Games] had a negative effect on New South Wales and Australia as a whole.”

During the Olympics, athletes, officials, media and fans often replace traditional tourists who are more likely to explore the city and spread the word about its virtues. Olympic tourists may brag about their swimming tickets in Boston. But jealous friends can’t then replicate that experience, cause the Olympics are over. So why go to Boston? The idea that the Olympics puts a city on a “world stage,” which will subsequently attract new investment and tourist dollars, in largely bunk.

“More often that not, Olympics wind up as a public burden,” says Zimbalist. “I have no reason to believe that Boston will be an exception rather than the rule.”

Beantown beat out San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

The United States Olympic Committee announced Thursday that Boston will represent the country’s bid to host the 2024 summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Beantown beat out San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. for the spot. Assuming the International Olympic Committee approves the New England hub as an applicant, Boston and the other international candidates will then prepare a plan for hosting the events that includes logistics like venues, transportation and security.

Boston’s Mayor Marty Walsh tweeted his delight Thursday and called the pick an “exceptional honor for Boston.”

“It is an exceptional honor for Boston to be chosen as the U.S.representative in the running for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” he said in a statement. “This selection is in recognition of our city’s talent, diversity and global leadership. Our goal is to host an Olympic and Paralympic Games that are innovative, walkable and hospitable to all. Boston hopes to welcome the world’s greatest athletes to one of the world’s great cities.”

Atlanta was the last American city to host the Summer Olympics, in 1996, but Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics.

They were skiing near their European training base in the Austrian Alps

Two prospects from the U.S. Ski Team were killed in an avalanche Monday while skiing near their European training base in the Austrian Alps.

The U.S. ski team said Ronnie Berlack, 20, and Bryce Astle, 19, died in the incident near the Rettenbach glacier near Soelden, the venue for the annual season-opening World Cup races.

Berlack, from Franconia, New Hampshire, and Astle, from Sandy, Utah, were part of a group of six skiers who were descending from the 3,056-meter Gaislachkogel when they left the prepared slope and apparently set off the avalanche. The other four skied out of the slide and escaped unhurt.

Officials in the Tyrolean region said an avalanche alert had been declared for the area after days of heavy snowfall and mild temperatures.

“Ronnie and Bryce were both outstanding ski racers who were passionate about their sport — both on the race course and skiing the mountain,” U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association President and CEO Tiger Shaw said. “Our hearts go out to the Berlack and Astle families, as well as to their extended sport family. Both of them loved what they did and conveyed that to those around them.”

Berlack grew up racing in New Hampshire and had been a student-athlete at Vermont’s Burke Mountain Academy. He was named to the so-called development team for potential World Cup racers following two top-20 finishes at the 2013 U.S. national championships and a spring tryout camp.

Astle was invited to train with the development team this season after strong early season results, including two top-10 results at NorAm Cup races last month in Canada.

The tragedy has left the U.S. ski team “in shock,” Alpine director Patrick Riml told The Associated Press in Croatia, Zagreb, where the American slalom team was preparing for a night race on Tuesday.

“We are all very close,” said Riml, an Austrian who was born and grew up in Soelden. “We train a lot in Park City. We’ll see how they handle the whole thing and how they react.”

Riml added “it’s a shock for everybody. Two great boys, great athletes, good skiers. They were fun to have around. We are all in shock, still. It’s very tragic.”

Berlack and Astle were part of a group of 10 skiers on the development team who gained experience in the Europa Cup and were preparing to race on the top-level World Cup.

“They all have the potential (to be on the World Cup),” Riml said. “These two boys were among the other eight boys who are our future. We believed in these guys, that’s why we selected them.”

Soelden has been the European base for the U.S. ski team since 2011.

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One of four cities will be picked for the bid in 2015

The United States Olympics Committee (USOC) unanimously approved on Tuesday a U.S. bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games.

The four possible bid cities are Boston, Washington D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles, whose representatives gave pitches to the committee Tuesday morning, according to a USOC statement. A selection for the bid will be made in January, and the International Olympic Committee will select a host city in 2017 after reviewing all submitted bids.

The organization’s last decision to bid to host the Olympics was for the 2016 Games, which was awarded to Rio de Janeiro instead of Chicago. The USOC had decided not to bid for the 2020 Olympics, which will place in Tokyo.

The last Summer Olympics to be held in the U.S. were the 1996 Games in Atlanta.

Newly discovered bacteria is resistant to much modern medicine

Scientists have discovered a hard-to-treat ‘super bacteria’ in the body of water where Olympic events are planned in 2016 in Brazil.

The bacteria, which contains a special enzyme that makes it highly resistant to medical treatment, was found in Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay, which will be the site of competitions in sailing and wind surfing, the Associated Press reports.

The Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, a Brazilian health institute, said it had not yet detected any infections from the contaminated water but that an infected person would need very strong antibiotics and possible hospitalization to fight off the bacteria. Infected people can spread the bacteria even if they don’t become sick, the institute said.

In Rio 70% of sewage goes untreated and flows into rivers, bays and beaches. Olympic planners have said they will reduce the amount of sewage flowing into Guanabara Bay by 80% in time for the Games.

[AP]

40 recommendations were made that can change the games

The list of prospective Olympics host cities may soon grow, as the International Olympics Committee announced 40 new recommendations for the 2020 games that include allowing some events to take place outside of the city itself or even, “in exceptional circumstances,” largely due to sustainability reasons, outside of the host country.

This would mostly impact the summer games, as the winter Olympics already allows events to take place in bordering countries.

“These 40 recommendations are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,” IOC President Thomas Bach said in a statement. “When you put them together, a picture emerges that shows the IOC safeguarding the uniqueness of the Olympic Games and strengthening sport in society.”

The “Olympic Agenda 2020″ also put forth recommendations that would decrease the seven-year approval timeline to allow new sports to enter the games, and the introduction of an official Olympic broadcast TV channel.