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SALT LAKE CITY — As the 2014 Olympic Games approach, there is still talk within the International Olympic Committee and with international experts about Salt Lake's economic success following our Winter Olympics. So, what about Sochi?
Twelve years later, the contrast between just the money spent for Salt Lake and then Sochi is shocking. Granted cities or countries bid for the games hoping for different benefits.
BYU associate professor of history Evan Ward wrote an article about what he calls the Olympics and the “slippery slope toward development.”
How well we remember the remarkable feeling during the 2002 Winter Olympics. Some balked at the cost of $1.2 billion, plus there was the strain of heightened security after 9/11. But what we built we still use, claiming the games as an economic success.
As for Sochi, the city is located in a fairly isolated area of that nation. In contrast, that country will spend some $50 billion to host the games.
Ward said the Russians spent $8 billion to $9 billion on one highway.
"They won't even recoup the money that they've put into one road that snakes 30 miles to one of the venues,” Ward said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes to attract his own countrymen to Sochi. Russians now vacation in Turkey. For others, Sochi is hard to get to.
"It's the airlines that are saying this isn't a profitable venture. So that's one of the things holding back Americans."
Ward specializes in tourism development, which is on the minds of leaders of every Olympic city.
As Rio welcomes visitors to the Summer Games in 2016, that city and country may actually benefit more than Sochi in worldwide recognition, Ward said.
"Hopefully it will give it more clout, not just in the hemisphere but the perception that Brazil will be one of the two or three leading countries in the Americas looking outward,” Ward said.
Thinking of the Salt Lake Olympics and other Winter Games, he said, both cities may find that the feeling each produces during the games will lead to success on many levels.
"Goodwill … and the spirit of internationalism that is contagious, regardless of other circumstances that surround the games,” Ward said.
Putin has said Western tourists may not see Sochi as a destination, so he is turning to China and the rest of Asia to draw people in after the games.
