Four stars for the spectacle, one star for the "legacy"
Athens has become the poster child for every anti-Olympic Games organization, and with some cause. The games cost Greece, a country of under 11 million people, 11 billion Euros to put on (for the math challenged, that's 1,000 Euros or about 1,500 U.S. dollars for every living human in the country). In the five years since the games, most of the venues sit unused and steadily decaying, with the exceptions of the main stadium and the indoor stadium, but even they are underused and surrounded by litter and waste. It appears that the the only economic spinoff from the games for Athens is hiring security guards to keep intruders out of the sealed off sites.
While some improvements to infrastructure were made, in the form of an updated subway and new airport, Greece is faced with a massive post Olympic debt that will take generations to retire, if it can be done at all.
While the Games look great on TV from the other side of the world or the continent, the effects on the host city are not uniformly positive. Athens may be the worst recent example, but speaking as someone who is looking anxiously at the spiralling costs of the Winter games coming to my city, its not exactly a beacon of hope.
Maybe folks in Chicago should consider themselves lucky that Rio beat them out....
