The 2024 Olympics Spectacular

ROMAN MARS: This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars. We are currently just two days away from the start of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. And if you couldn’t already tell from the TV commercials, the branded soda cans, and the Emily in Paris spon-con, the Olympics are once again everywhere. So, in the Olympic spirit, we are bringing you four stories about the games in all their international theatrical glory, starting with one from 99% Invisible’s supervising producer Christopher Johnson. Hello, Christopher Johnson. What do you have for me today?

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Hello, Roman Mars. So, this summer–for the first time ever–there’ll be Olympic-level breakdancing. It’s officially called “breaking,” and it’s the first ever so-called “dancesport” to happen in Summer Olympics history.

ROMAN MARS: Wow, I did not know that. That’s very exciting.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: I agree. I support all things breakdancing, especially because I’m a hip hop head. But breaking is not like running or swimming or throwing stuff. It’s not your typical Olympic sport. And this got me thinking–as unusual as Olympic breakdancing might seem–it cannot be the oddest event to ever be in the games. And I was right.

ROMAN MARS: Okay, so tell me more.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Okay. So, first of all, I need you to know that many of the weirdest Olympic sports in history came into being way back before the Olympics were considered the pinnacle of professional athletics. Those earliest games were actually meant for amateurs. The modern games were started in 1896 by this French aristocrat named Pierre de Coubertin. This guy’s life is a whole story in itself. You should look him up. But basically the Olympics were his dream. He pitched it in lectures all over France, like, “Let’s all get together and play sports and then hand out medals and trophies.”

ROMAN MARS: And these sports were definitely not for professional athletes. These were for average amateurs.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Exactly. These were mostly amateurs. And when the Olympics began, the spirit of the games was hardcore amateurism.

DAVID GOLDBLATT: So, at that point, the one-offs and the crazies and all sorts of folks just show up.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: I talked to David Goldblatt, who wrote a book called The Games: A Global History of the Olympics, and he told me just how casual the earliest Olympic games were.

DAVID GOLDBLATT: I mean, in 1896, at the Athens Games–the first games–the guys that won the pistol competition are two brothers from Harvard. And they’re on holiday!

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: So, these guys just rolled up to the Olympics pistol event like, “Hey y’all. We have guns. We can shoot.”

DAVID GOLDBLATT: They just showed up. They had their pistols with them–of course–as everybody does when they travel in the 19th century. And they took part!

ROMAN MARS: Okay. So, in the first modern Olympics, people could just walk on from off the street and they could participate. That’s outstanding.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Exactly. And the fact that the Olympics were new and experimental and not at all about being a pro–that opened the door to all sorts of sports being in those early games. For example, in the second ever modern Olympic games, one of the events was firefighting.

ROMAN MARS: Oh my goodness. How did that work?

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: So, they lit a house on fire, and you had to put that out. And then you had to do a fake rescue. The 1900 games also had this aquatics event where you’d go under boats and then over boats and then under some more boats.

DAVID GOLDBLATT: Obstacle swimming. It’s a tremendous event. And you had swimmers diving off boats that had been moored on the river. And they would swim–you know–20 meters. And then they would have to either go under a second set of boats and come out the other side. Or sometimes they had to clamber into the boat and then dive off back into the river. And this is all happening on the Seine. Lord knows what the condition of the water was.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Other events from the 1900 games include hot air balloon racing and croquet and cannon shooting. Can you imagine cannon shooting in the Olympics?

ROMAN MARS: So, if I’m hearing you right, the 1900 games specifically was the one with so many great unusual events.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Yes. But check this out. One reason these Olympics have so many random events may very well be because the 1900 games weren’t really, actually, factually, officially recognized as the Olympics–at least not until, like, 80 years later.

ROMAN MARS: Okay, so what do you mean by that?

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: So, in 1900, the Olympics was just in its second year. And it wasn’t its own, established, standalone thing yet. So, they kind of just glommed on to the World’s Fair, which was also happening in Paris at the same time. And the World’s Fair people really didn’t know what the hell the Olympics even were. Some folks thought it was this weird neo Hellenic cult.

DAVID GOLDBLATT: Nobody really knew that the Olympics were going on. There were no posters with Olympic insignia around. The press referred to it as the “international games.” They didn’t quite know what to do with it.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: The 1900 games were also an outlier in much of Olympic history because, instead of lasting just two weeks, those games lasted five whole months. And they had more than double the events that we have today. And in the end, the IOC had to go back 80 years later and decide which of those weirdo events were even going to count in the Olympic records.

DAVID GOLDBLATT: It was only in the 1980s that actually a definitive list of who won what, what events were Olympic, and which weren’t were drawn up by the IOC. And one event that most definitely was not considered Olympic was the firefighters.

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. Huge mistake. Huge mistake.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Totally agree. Rest in peace, firefighting in the Olympics. But listen, the fun Olympic sports didn’t end with 1900. And in fact, one of those sports put the United States at the center of an Olympic scandal. And that sport was tug of war.

DAVID GOLDBLATT: Tug of war is an absolutely fantastic sport. I can’t believe actually that we don’t still have it in the Olympics.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: So, you might think of tug of war as something you did as part of field day when you were growing up–right after the sack races and before running with an egg on a spoon. But in the early 1900s, tug of war, Roman Mars, was hot–so hot it was in five summer games.

ROMAN MARS: I mean, this also strikes me as super fun to watch. You got all these gigantic… André the Giant, like, with the singlet on you–WrestleMania III style–just pulling on things. You just get your biggest dudes in the whole country.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Exactly. It is everything that you’re picturing. It’s, like, between five and eight guys–the numbers changed over time–on each side, pulling for their lives. It’s basic. It’s straightforward. It’s primal. But for such a simple sport, Olympic tug of war got a little spicy, Roman–lots of little scandals along the way.

DAVID GOLDBLATT: The 1908 games in London are probably the best example of that. You’ve got a British team and an American team contesting. The Americans–it’s basically a scratch team. It’s, like, the wrestlers and the heavy guys from the field events, and they’re put together.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: And they’re going against the Brits who have a legit tug of war team. They’re all members of the Liverpool City police, and they’re hella strong. They’ve been training a lot. Tug of war is what they do.

DAVID GOLDBLATT: But the real edge that the Brits have got is that these guys show up in their work boots. And they’ve got steel capped heels. So, you can imagine–given how tug of war works–that is giving you a real edge over a bunch of guys who are wearing their track shoes.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: That is the American side. They’re at this huge disadvantage.

DAVID GOLDBLATT: The Liverpool team absolutely crushed them. The Americans are, of course, incensed, saying that this can’t possibly be in the rules.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: The Americans contested, they were overruled, the Brits won, and the Americans apparently left in a huff.

DAVID GOLDBLATT: What I love about this moment is that the American sports press–which is just kind of finding its hyperbolic voice at this moment in history–writes about the event. And the New York Evening Post said of the city of Liverpool police boots, “They had inch thick soles and were heavier than those worn in the English navy. While the New York evening world thought the boots were “as big as North River ferry boats.”

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: By the way, at that same Olympics, another British tug of war team–the City of London police team–they later challenged the Americans to a match in just their socks. And the Americans said, “No thanks.”

ROMAN MARS: Okay. So, they probably knew what was up.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Right. Right. You see how it is. Now, obviously–sadly–we no longer have Olympic-level tug of war.

ROMAN MARS: Again, criminal shame.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Totally, right? We also don’t have obstacle swimming or canon shooting. Come on! Most of them disappeared pretty quickly once the Olympics became the professionalized event that we know it to be today. But that doesn’t mean that we lost all interesting sports because there’s a whole other category known as “demonstration sports.”

ROMAN MARS: I think I have some idea what those are, but could you describe demonstration sports to me?

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Sure. So, those are essentially sports from specific regions in the world that aren’t meant to be official sports just yet. They’re kind of just played for show and to promote the international spirit of the games.

DAVID GOLDBLATT: They’re chosen by the host. And usually it’s an opportunity to showcase a sport that is not globally particularly well known, but which is important to that nation.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: So for example, there’s this sport called “glima,” which is basically Viking wrestling. That was a demo sport in 1912. Later, you get Swedish gymnastics, which I didn’t know existed. There’s korfball, which shined for a couple of years in the 1920s. But some events do eventually become permanent fixtures of the Olympics.

DAVID GOLDBLATT: So, in 1964, for example, judo became a demonstration sport. And in the case of judo–and this is also true of TaeKwonDo, first introduced as a demonstration sport by the South Koreans at the 1988 Solo Olympics–they then go on to be permanent Olympic sports.

ROMAN MARS: I mean, that is nice that they can introduce new things and then have them be adopted as more and more of the world takes them on as no longer regional sports. That’s great. I mean, do we have any cool demo sports this year that you’re aware of?

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Sadly, we do not. The last demo games included in the Olympics were actually way back in 1992, which had several games, including roller hockey.

ROMAN MARS: Well, if we don’t get any demo sports, at least we have breaking to look forward to. That’s going to be exciting. Well, thank you so much for this, Christopher. I had fun.

CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON: Same here, Roman Mars. You’re welcome.

ROMAN MARS: When a city hosts the Olympics, they have to construct a ton of new buildings, like an entire village to house the athletes and a track and field stadium and a specialty venue for bicycle races and… The list can get very long. Sometimes those structures end up being a fixture of civic life for years to come–like the London stadium, which now hosts soccer games, or the Atlanta Athletes Village, which has been converted into student housing. But there are also venues that become white elephants, looming over the skyline and offering grim reminders of the high cost of two weeks of fun. Such is the case in Montreal, Canada, host of the 1976 Summer Olympics. Here’s producer Chris Berube.

CHRIS BERUBE: The Montreal Olympics were the brainchild of Jean Drapeau. And I think it’s fair to say, when it comes to big city mayors, they don’t make ’em like Drapeau anymore. Jean Drapeau served as mayor twice between 1954 and 1986. He wasn’t very intimidating. He was kind of diminutive–always had these big square glasses and this of the time mustache. But during his hotly debated 29 years in office, John Drapeau had big ambitions. He used to drive around Montreal in a limousine, blasting arias by Richard Wagner and stopping to talk with his constituents and admire some of the works he had commissioned. Even though Toronto overtook Montreal as Canada’s biggest city in the ’70s, Drapeau insisted that his town would always be the greatest. “Let Toronto become Milan,” Drapeau once said, “because Montreal will always be Rome.” And during his early years as mayor, the city did go on quite a hot streak. Drapeau managed to rustle up a subway system, a major league baseball team, a world’s fair, and–in a master stroke–the Summer Olympics of 1976, somehow beating out both Moscow and Los Angeles for the honor. For Drapeau, the Olympics would cement Montreal as Canada’s greatest metropolis. But he faced some pointed questions, like, “How exactly are we supposed to afford all of this?” Drapeau was unfazed by the criticism. He famously promised voters, “the Olympic Games could no more run a deficit than a man could have a baby.” And if you’re thinking, “Hey, that’s kind of a weird thing to say–I wonder if those words would come back to haunt him in some way,” perhaps you’ve guessed the outcome here, but those words would 100% come back to haunt him. Of the proposed $120 million budget for the Olympics, more than half was reserved just for constructing Olympic Stadium. It was designed to have this unique donut shape, giving it the nickname “The Big O.” And it promised to be state of the art, with a retractable roof that would look like a big white tortoise shell. The closable roof was a novelty at the time, and the idea was that sports could be played there after the games, during Montreal’s brutal winters. But the most distinct feature of the Olympic Stadium would be a 540-foot tower that would arch over the field at a dramatic 45-degree slant. A tower was an unusual thing to add to a stadium, but Drapeau was insistent. He wanted it to be like the Eiffel Tower–an icon that everybody conjured when they heard the name “Montreal.” But reviews were mixed. Years later, a columnist for the Montreal Gazette, Jack Todd, would call the stadium design “space aged fascist.” When construction began on The Big O, the problem started pretty much right away. Construction kicked off 18-months late. And then it got delayed again by a worker strike that wiped out most of 1975. That left just one year to finish the project before the thing was supposed to open. Against all odds, Drapeau’s grand Olympic Stadium was finally finished right before the games… Well, sort of finished. The state-of-the-art retractable roof? It wasn’t ready, neither was Drapeau’s big tower–not even close. Only the very bottom was completed. So, on opening day, the tower was still just a stump with some wires poking out of the top. It just sat there, like this puny concrete tree trunk. Despite all this, the games–for the most part–went pretty well. People won medals. The city got some nice press. But when you talk to Montrealers about the 1976 Olympics, nobody leads with the athletes or the fanfare. They only want to talk about the hangover. At the time of the games, some estimates put the cost of the stadium at over $500 million–just way over budget. But the worst was yet to come. After the Olympics, the stadium became the new home of the Montreal Expos baseball team, which was kind of perfect because the ‘Spos had been playing in a makeshift ballfield in a municipal park before that. And they needed the upgrade. But my God, The Big O was a horrible place to watch baseball. I remember how sound used to echo off the concrete walls in the hideous, yellow, plastic seats. And the aesthetics were the least of their problems. The big, dramatic tower–that was finished in 1977, but it was clearly something of a rush job. At one point, years later, there was an explosion in the tower. And chunks of steel fell off during a game. Thankfully, nobody got hurt. But the biggest headache was the retractable roof. That wasn’t completed until 1987–a full ten years overdue. And to put it bluntly, the roof was not very good at being a roof. It was made of Kevlar. And one time when it rained, drops pierced through the tarp, soaking everybody in the crowd. Then the roof was hit by a tornado in 1991, which tore a bunch of holes in it. And the same year, a support beam collapsed, and the team had to play the rest of their games on the road. Eventually, they gave up on the whole state-of-the-art retractable thing. And the roof–it just became a normal roof. But that didn’t fix much. A couple of times, snow built up over the winter and caused small cave-ins. Gosh, I cannot get into all of the calamities that happened with this roof. Bob Ojeda, a pitcher for the LA Dodgers, put it succinctly. “This roof–even when the thing worked–it didn’t work.” The city finally paid off its Olympic debt in 2006, 30 years after the games. And while estimates vary, if you count up all the stadium shenanigans, the final price tag for the Montreal Olympics was over $1.2 billion. Today, the stadium’s not even home to the Montreal Expos. They left town in 2004. But The Big O is still standing. According to the provincial government, it would just cost way too much to tear it down. So instead, they’re going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make it better. The culture minister says that the city actually needs a major concert venue. Maybe Taylor Swift or Beyoncé could play there since both of them skipped Montreal on their last world tour. So, the leaning tower and the concrete ring–they aren’t going anywhere. They remain this potent symbol, mocking everybody who thought this futuristic donut could ever be the Québecois Coliseum. John Drapeau was wrong about a lot of things–about the Olympics paying for themselves, about who he hired to build the stadium, about how he would be remembered… But he was right about this. Nothing really looks like The Big O. And when I think of Montreal, I can’t really imagine the city without it.

ROMAN MARS: There’s really one day–one event–when an Olympic stadium is on full display. And that event is the opening ceremony. It is a high stakes moment where a lot can go right or very, very wrong. Here’s 99PI supervising producer Vivian Le with a story about the opening ceremony to change all opening ceremonies. Unfortunately, many animals were harmed in the making of this story.

VIVIAN LE: Yes. So, Roman, this pretty horrible thing happened during the Seoul Olympics in South Korea. And I will admit that, when I first learned about this horrible thing, I did immediately think, “This is a 99PI story.”

ROMAN MARS: Okay, well, now I’m nervous. But go for it.

VIVIAN LE: Okay. So, just to set the scene, the year is 1988. It’s a beautiful sunny day in Seoul. in the stands of Seoul Olympic Stadium is a sea of perms and aviator sunglasses. Hundreds of drummers and synchronized dancers just performed on the field. The athletes just finished marching out on the track for the parade of nations.

ROMAN MARS: Oh, it’s my favorite part. All the flags.

VIVIAN LE: Yes, all the flags. All the Germans in silly hats. The Olympic flag has just been raised to possibly the most dramatic music ever written. 2,400 doves of peace have just been released while five jets simultaneously skywrite the Olympic rings over the crowd. It was a scene which leads us all into the pivotal moment of the opening ceremony, which is the lighting of the Olympic flame. So the torch was just carried into the stadium by a 76-year-old Sohn Kee Chung, who was actually the first ethnic Korean to win an Olympic medal half a century earlier. And he’s running the flame over to the Olympic cauldron, which is this absolutely massive structure that looks maybe a hundred feet tall. And so, the torch bearers have to be raised slowly on this platform up to the cauldron to light the flame. And I am actually just going to play the video of what happened next so you can see it for yourself.

ROMAN MARS: Okay. So, they’re being raised up to the platform on this little elevator. And they’re about 10 feet away, and there’s three torch bearers. And they’re facing the crowd. They’re not facing the cauldron, but the cauldron is full of birds. There’s birds. There are birds everywhere. Some of them are flying, some of them are staying, and they’re turning around. They’re turning around, and they’re about to light. And they have no idea what’s going to happen. Oh, my God. Okay. The thing caught– Some of– Oh no. Oh no. Yeah, a few of them made it out, but several did not. You can really tell. Oh, my God. Oh, the humanity.

VIVIAN LE: Oh, the humanity! But yeah, so of course I feel terrible for the doves. This is horrible to see. But I felt especially terrible for the torch bearers because what are they going to do? They’re on this gigantic platform up in the sky.

ROMAN MARS: And from the video, you can tell that the doves from the edges had somewhat dispersed. But also, when you’re in front of that many people, it is really hard to ad-lib or to change it up a little bit when you’re expected to do something extremely important. All they have in their hand is a lit torch. What are you going to do? It’s so unfortunate. I feel so bad for everybody involved.

VIVIAN LE: Yeah. You probably wouldn’t know it from the video, but the animal handlers actually trained for a year. They were supposed to fly in these widening circles over the field and then disperse into five different directions. But a lot of them, I guess, landed on the Olympic cauldron.

ROMAN MARS: Doing what doves do. They land on things.

VIVIAN LE: Exactly. Doves are going to dove. But yeah, this scene in which a number of doves being consumed by the Olympic flame happened in front of tens of millions of people around the world…

ROMAN MARS: Oh, my God.

VIVIAN LE: The other horrible part of this is that hosting the Olympics was a really, really big deal for South Korea, in general, because it had been a country that previously was ravaged by war and occupation and military dictatorship. So, this was going to be the moment where they marked a new era for South Korea.

ROMAN MARS: I remember I was very aware of these Olympics. I was an alive and cognizant human being. And these were big games. They talked about this–in the moment–that they were a big deal for Korea. And I can totally imagine that this is not the best look for this international symbol of peace getting torched in the Olympic cauldron when you’re trying to put your best foot forward. That’s hard.

VIVIAN LE: But I do want to say that the Seoul games on the whole were actually really, really well received. This Olympics was seen as a really positive moment for the country’s history. But the International Olympic Committee received so many complaints about the doves being burned alive on television that they actually decided to change the charter for the opening ceremony. And although it had been a part of the Olympics since 1920, they said, “No more live doves. We’re done with the doves.” And I actually do agree with this. I don’t think live animals should be used in these live situations because of what just happened.

ROMAN MARS: I mean, it makes a ton of sense to me that they should just do away with it after some horrific incident because nobody wants animals to be harmed.

VIVIAN LE: Totally.

ROMAN MARS: But given how the Olympics has all kinds of things that don’t make any sense to me that are just steeped in the tradition of the Olympics, I’m actually surprised that they removed this whole protocol from the opening ceremony just because of how symbolically powerful doves are–but also just how stubborn they are about their own traditions. I mean, it just blows my mind that they reacted so quickly.

VIVIAN LE: Well, funny that you say that because they never technically did remove the dove release from the opening ceremony. They just fully leaned into what you said–the symbolic nature of it–and then pivoted entirely to a “symbolic dove release.”

ROMAN MARS: Okay. What does a symbolic dove release look like?

VIVIAN LE: So, the first Olympic games to do this was actually the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics. And actually–fun fact–the dove release practice had not actually been as much a part of the winter games just because these games were usually hosted in freezing cold cities that are inhospitable to live animals.

ROMAN MARS: That makes sense.

VIVIAN LE: But that year, in 1992, they performed the first symbolic dove release by releasing white balloons.

ROMAN MARS: Oh, okay. They have their own problems, but I get it. Makes sense. But what have other cities done since then?

VIVIAN LE: So, the next summer games–the 1996 Atlanta games–they had 100 children come running into the stadium with paper mache doves on sticks so it looked like they were fluttering in the wind. The next couple games–the 2000 games in Sydney and the 2004 games in Athens–they both featured projections of doves, which I think honestly is a little bit of a cop out. The 2008 Beijing games actually went pretty hard.

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. I mean, the entire Beijing Olympics went pretty hard.

VIVIAN LE: Oh, yeah. So, they had women dressed in white doing a dance and flapping their arms like bird wings, as there was dove projections in the background. And then that was followed by massive fireworks, which also represented doves, that were shooting out of the stadium. I think the 2012 London Olympics was my favorite interpretation. They had 75 white clad cyclists, wearing LED wings, circling the stadium. And I think it’s my favorite because having people on bikes be the doves kind of makes absolutely no sense. And that whole entire opening ceremony was just, like, a wacky fever daydream. And since then, we’ve had the return of children–this time, they ran to the stadium wielding dove-shaped kites.Aand then in the Tokyo Olympics, there were thousands of paper doves falling from the ceiling to the music of Susan Boyle. So, that is how we have gotten past the live dove release in all of the ceremonies since then.

ROMAN MARS: Even though this has important symbolism, I’m kind of intrigued by the idea that each host country has to come up with this whole new form of symbolism to approximate doves being released. That’s actually kind of cool–that they can come up with something original every time.

VIVIAN LE: Yeah. And my home city that I live in–Los Angeles–is going to be hosting the 2028 Olympics, which… Pray for us, please, Roman. I really don’t want them to do it here. Oh, God. But I mean, the one thing is Los Angeles is the city of entertainment. It’s what we do. So, I guess, if anybody from the LA 2028 committee is listening, try to do something cool for that symbolic dove release. Also, we need more public restrooms before you guys come to Los Angeles. Just think about that, too.

ROMAN MARS: I mean, that’s really what the focus should be.

VIVIAN LE: Yeah. 200 white toilets lining sidewalks.

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. Oh, my God. Dove-shaped public restrooms all dotted around the landscape of Los Angeles. It would be such a service.

VIVIAN LE: Two birds with one stone, Roman. I’m telling you.

ROMAN MARS: I know. Well, this is awesome. Thank you so much for telling me about this conundrum that they have to deal with every four years. Thanks, Vivian. After the break, Avery Trufelman has a very hot take about the future of the Olympics. We’re back with one more story for you from Olympic Games’ past and future. And this one comes to us from Articles of Interest host and 99% Invisible alum Avery Trufelman.

AVERY TRUFELMAN: Good to be back. Thank you for having me.

ROMAN MARS: Okay. Avery, you’re here because you have a big idea about the Olympics. And I would very much like for you to share that idea with us.

AVERY TRUFELMAN: I’ve got a take that I like to whip out at a certain hour at a party to make people mad. People like to fight me on this, and I really don’t understand because I think I’m right.

ROMAN MARS: Okay. What’s your proposal?

AVERY TRUFELMAN: Okay. The Olympics should be in Greece every single time. It should not move to different cities. It should only be in one city. And that city should be in Greece. And I need more people to beat this drum with me.

ROMAN MARS: Okay. So, tell me what is behind this proposal? What problem are you trying to solve?

AVERY TRUFELMAN: What problem am I not trying to solve? There’s so many problems with the Olympics. And I first had this idea back in 2016, when the Olympics were in Brazil and they were mowing down homes. Favelas were being destroyed to make way for these big, fancy structures that were being erected with dubious labor practices because it had to be made so quickly. And the thought was just like, “Well, who is this for?” If you’re destroying housing so that visitors can come in and then leave, who is this actually for? And also, it’s not like the people in the city want the Olympics to come and change their traffic patterns and change their transit patterns and disrupt everything.

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. I mean, it’s clear that the Olympics is good for a select group of regional oligarchs. And it’s bad for almost everyone else. I mean, maybe you can get psyched up about it because the Olympics inspires a certain type of pride. And I love watching Olympics. I know you love watching Olympics.

AVERY TRUFELMAN: I love the Olympics. I love the Olympics. I propose this because I love the Olympics.

ROMAN MARS: But it is extremely disruptive.

AVERY TRUFELMAN: Yes!

ROMAN MARS: Well, I mean, I was in Athens, Georgia, in grad school during the ’96 Atlanta Olympics. When they say an Olympics is in a city, it kind of spreads out. And so, a few events–three or four events–were in Athens, Georgia. And living through it was just misery. And one of the parts that I really didn’t like is that the local merchants were kind of sold a line that they were going to make tons of money. And it turned out, like, no one really did. And it just made things kind of miserable because some volunteer in an orange vest told you that you couldn’t drive down a street that you drove past every day in your life. And this was in ’96; 9/11 hadn’t happened yet. I can’t imagine what it’s like today. So, they are disruptive. I totally get that. If you live in a city where the Olympics is being proposed, I’m telling you don’t buy into it.

AVERY TRUFELMAN: Run.

ROMAN MARS: It’s just misery. Get out of town.

AVERY TRUFELMAN: Do a house swap. And then the other thing is that it’s terrible for the athletes. Why would they want to be uprooted into a totally new city every single time–with a totally different climate and not knowing their way around? This job–being an Olympic athlete–it depends on having slept well and eaten well and being comfortable. And if it were in the same place every four years and they could maybe go there to practice in the off-season, I think it would do wonders, especially because the facilities that they erect to house the athletes are, like, an afterthought after these really fancy stadia! And I forget which Olympics this was, but the Olympic Village–the athletes were sleeping in cardboard beds. That’s insane. It’s not treating the actual athletes well if it’s in a different place every time and they’re expected to come up with all this housing.

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. I mean, they’re also really, really expensive. It’s a strange thing to build all these facilities so quickly. And usually it’s done with poor labor practices. It’s very, very expensive. And it’s really hard for these cities to make their money back from their investment.

AVERY TRUFELMAN: And they say it’s going to be tourism, but it’s not tourism because–as you said–it kind of sucks when the Olympics are taking over your city. And if Greece were allowed to invest fully in state-of-the-art facilities, have them maintained, and have them used, they could actually make money back.

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. It’s true. They’re not in full use after the Olympics. It’s pretty rare for that to happen. And therefore, building one thing, maintaining it, taking care of it, updating it, and having the IOC funnel their money into it instead of local taxes being spent on it, seems like a great idea. I love it.

AVERY TRUFELMAN: Yes. Steady investment. And then, I think, it would allow for other teams from all over the world to, instead of like, “Oh, we need to update our equipment,” just pay for a plane or a train ticket to Greece. They can have practice there in the off-season. It would get full use almost constantly. And it would be great for the local economy. People would actually be spending time in whatever city this was. So, I don’t see why it’s so controversial.

ROMAN MARS: But what about this tradition of the bidding process? There are certain instances where hosting the Olympics is such a proud moment for at least some people in the country. The Beijing Olympics–the opening ceremony was just beautiful and artistic and precise. And you could tell that the Chinese government was like, “We are going to put our best foot forward to just wow everybody in the world with this.”

AVERY TRUFELMAN: But yeah, I think that’s also part of the problem. There’s such immense pressure for every host nation to go, “Quickly, quickly, quickly! Clean it up! Clean it up!” I mean, we did that episode about the ’68 Mexico Olympics where a bunch of protesters were shot at! They were protesting the single party government–a totally reasonable grievance–peacefully protesting. And we don’t even know the amount of the dead because they were quickly cleaned up. The blood was washed from the streets so the Olympics could begin. Yes, sure. Sometimes it’s a great way to hearken, like, arrival on the global scene. But it’s also a way for nations to shove everything quickly under the bed and be like, “Ta-da! We made it.” And I think a better way to prove yourself in the Olympics is to take care of your athletes and win things. I don’t know.

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. I mean, I think that people think of it as this moment that can catalyze a lot of infrastructural investments in a place. However, those investments are geared towards this purpose, which is not necessarily serving the public at large.

AVERY TRUFELMAN: Right, exactly. To use the Mexico ’68 Olympics again–that was even a good example of infrastructure being added. It was really responsible for the expansion of the Mexico subway system. But still, I mean, it was designed so that no one would have to speak Spanish to understand it. It was geared for an international audience. Obviously, we’re all for new infrastructure. But the whole thing about infrastructure is that it should be for the people who live there. And the Olympics is not for the people who live there.

ROMAN MARS: So, why Greece? Why is that the place that you think should be the center of all this?

AVERY TRUFELMAN: Anywhere other than Greece would be cultural appropriation. It’s great! It belongs to the Greek. They did the ancient version. They did the revived version. We still… The flame starts in Greece, and they run it around the world. It so obviously belongs– I don’t know about the Winter Olympics. Maybe that can be a bid every year.

ROMAN MARS: That would be hard to figure out.

AVERY TRUFELMAN: Yeah, that’d be hard to figure out. But the Summer Olympics 100% belongs in Greece somewhere. I mean, if you think about it, it’s like Greece’s intellectual property that’s being used. And so yeah, Greece! Also, why not? It’d be a fun place for athletes to go visit. They get to know the restaurants. They’d get to know the–whatever–local massage therapists. It would actually be good for the community because there would be more of an incentive to actually get to know it. And it wouldn’t feel so temporary.

ROMAN MARS: I love it. I think this is a great idea. I’m sold. Rather than grabbing onto this new tradition of hosting it in a different place every four years, embrace the old tradition.

AVERY TRUFELMAN: I know. I’m like, “We must go back to the old ways.” But I don’t mean it that way. Put it in Greece. Just have it be in Greece.

ROMAN MARS: Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on this. I’m totally sold. I find no flaws in your argument whatsoever at this point.

AVERY TRUFELMAN: Thank you so much. This is very validating.

ROMAN MARS: 99% Invisible this week was produced by Chris Berube, Christopher Johnson, Jeyca Maldonado-Medina and Vivian Le. Edited by Kelly Prime. Mix and sound design by Martín Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real. Fact-checking by Lara Bullens. Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is our digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. Nikita Apte is our intern . The rest of the team includes Jayson De Leon, Emmett FitzGerald, Gabriella Gladney, Lasha Madan, Neena Pathak, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM podcast family now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building… in beautiful… uptown… Oakland, California. You can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as our brand new Discord server. There are about 4,000 people talking about architecture–talking about Power broker–talking about all kinds of fun things. Please join us there. There’s a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99pi.org.