Future Poltergeist

I mentioned yesterday that I'd found a chart of Olympics profits for the past forty years.  The chart is here .  (The usual caveats about Wikipedia apply but it seems to be in good order.  Also, data from some countries is almost certainly more reliable than from others.)  First, the breakdown and then I'll have some comments. Montreal, '76 - $990 million loss Lake Placid, '80 - $8.5 loss Moscow, '80 - unknown Sarajevo, '84 - $10 million profit Los Angeles, '84 - $250 million profit Calgary, '88 - $32 million profit Seoul, '88 - $300 million profit Barcelona, '88 - $10 million profit Albertville, '92 - $67 million loss Lillehammer, '94 - unknown Atlanta, '96 - $10 million profit Nagano, '98 - unknown but a loss Sydney, '00 - $2.1 billion loss Salt Lake City, '02 - $101 million profit Athens, '04 - $14-15 billion loss Torino, '06 - $3.2 million loss Beijing, '08 - $146 million profit Vancouve...

Yesterday I ran across an article about the remaining bids for the 2022 Olympics .  The short version is that it seems to be coming down to Kazakhstan or China as hosts.  In other words, here comes Beijing 2022!  One of the common themes for cities withdrawing bids is that the Olympics are always big money losers.  I know from my other reading that this isn't true.  For some time I've thought of tracking down past Olympic games and creating some kind of chart but a little research (thanks Google!) and I found one.  I'll try to break that one down soon.  In the meantime, I wanted to talk about the poster child for the 'Olympics are money losers' argument: host of the '76 games, Montreal.  The games were wildly over budget and only paid off in 2006.  It took an additional 30 years after the games ended to finally pay them off.  That's a long time.  What happened?  The biggest culprit is probably the Montreal mayor, Jean Drapea...

I'd like to think that I had a big hand in this .  (Only kidding.)

A misty morning farm in Holland.

Rio is set to host the 2016 Olympics and there are numerous reports that they aren't on schedule to be ready.  The city will host the World Cup this summer and there is talk that the IOC will use that event to gauge whether or not the Olympics are in jeopardy.  The latest report includes a rumor that Moscow could be a back up site .  The IOC dismissed this as fantasy and frankly, it's hard to see.  There is no way that Putin could be awarded another Olympic games when he's invading other countries.  A move to Moscow would quickly be followed by massive boycotts. The Moscow rumor has almost certainly released in response to a report that London has been secretly been scouted as a back up in case Rio can't go.  The idea is that most of London's venues would still be open for business so the prep work would be easy.  There is even an historical precedent.  London got the 1948 games because they were most able to put the games together on a rush bas...