Issues And Challenges Of Athens Olympics
The new underground railways built for the Games are capable of carrying one million passengers daily (over one quarter of Athens’ population), which can help divert residents away from the busy roads to reduce traffic. There was also the creation of the Proastiakos - a suburban railway linking Athens to the areas surrounding it such as the aforementioned airport, Corinthia and Euboea across forty-five stations - in the months before, during and following the Games. Following the Games, the Hellenic Olympic Committee (Greek governing body of the Olympics) president, Spyros Kapralos, asserted: “The Games did serve to upgrade a big portion of the infrastructure of the city and the country. The quality of life here improved immensely. ” This may be an attempt to justify the large costs however, but it must be noted that GDP per capita, the main measure of living standards, more than doubled between 2002 and 2007. Another point that must be mentioned is that Greece is the smallest country ever to host the summer Games, with the exception of Helsinki, Finland in 1952 and Greece itself in 1896, so large improvements to infrastructure is to be expected as the area is not used to the large amount of visitors which goes hand-in-hand with hosting the Olympics.
London had a more established transportation system than Athens, including five airports and the world-renowned London Underground system with two hundred and seventy stations and around 250 miles of track. This meant that London could only make minor adjustments rather than creating new railways and airports. One of the notable transportation upgrades was the upgrade to Stratford Station (the closest station to the Olympic Stadium), spending £120m on improvements such as a north-facing exit, opening up abandoned platforms and a new ticket hall. Another transport upgrade funded from the Olympic budget was on the Docklands Light Railway, to the tune of £80m12. This was spent on a 6 km expansion from Canning Town to Stratford International which core was formed from the abandoned North London Line alignment. This extension to the line links many of the major venues including the Olympic Park, the ExCeL arena, and other competitions in Greenwich and the Royal Docks. Following the upgrades on the DLR, Boris Johnson, the then-current Mayor of London described it as a “permanent benefit for Londoners and all those travelling in the capital from here on in. ” This was substantiated by Hugh Sumner, Director of transport for the Olympic Delivery Authority who claimed the upgrades will “deliver a much-improved service which will leave east London better connected after the Games. ”13 These upgrades were especially important as it was expected that over eighty percent of Olympic spectators would commute to and from the venues hosting the events by rail.
However, the Athens development was at the epicentre of controversy as the rush to complete these projects was unprofessional and came at the expense of workers’ rights. George Theodorou, the general secretary of the Greek Construction Workers' Union, said that he had identified and collected details of the fourteen known workers to have died from working on building infrastructure or venues but the death toll is likely to be closer to forty. He claimed: "Men are being forced to work long shifts, up to fourteen hours a day every day, in very hot temperatures and under constant pressure to complete construction work in time for the Olympics. ” The overspending and poor working conditions is testament to the manic scramble to construct these venues, that would be shut down in the UK. Workers were said to have had no protective clothing and little to no organisation, meaning multiple deaths were sadly inevitable. In comparison, one person died in the construction of Sydney 2000 but more impressively zero people died in the building of London 2012 venues, making London the only Olympics to not have a fatality in construction. Greek Opposition MP Liana Kanelli claims that despite the Greeks winning with their bid in 1997, work on the infrastructure and venue projects weren’t started until the 21st century. "There wasn't a brick laid for the first three-and-a-half years.
We've now got about one injury or one death every couple of days”. So much so, they were given a warning by the IOC in 2000 to drastically step up its organisation efforts or risk losing the Games. "This is a Greek tragedy that we will have to face after the Olympics. " This manifests their deficiencies in planning and by being behind on all these projects, quality would have dropped, engendering mistakes to happen and due to the overtime costs paying lavishly for three shifts a day to ensure venues were ready. In conclusion, I feel that Athens didn’t have the sufficient infrastructure to host an Olympic Games so had to spend big in order for transport around the city to handle the mass influx of tourists from all around the world. London already had these facilities so could make minor changes and improvements to benefit the transportation to the new venues. The long-term benefits of the big infrastructural projects can be seen by the graph to the right. In the ten years before the Olympics, the percentage of FDI of GDP never reached above 1%, yet six of the next thirteen years following 2004 were and one would assume this would almost every year if the global financial crisis hadn’t had hit in 2007, which can be seen by the very low figures in the immediately following years. This shows that the infrastructure is attracting global businesses to Greece due to the mobility of labour and resources with the improved transportation around Athens. This can be still seen to this day by in 2018, China Energy Investment Corporation, one of the world’s largest power companies, has signed a deal to invest €3bn in renewable energy. However, it must be noted that China are investing all over the world, such as the planned ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, so only so much of this investment can be put down to Athens 2004.
Also, Thomas Cook has pledged to invest €180m in the Greek tourist industry in 2018, with CEO of the tour operators recognising the potential in Greece by opening up four new destinations in Greece and thirty-four new routes in the past two years, and estimating that the firm will oversee three million tourists to Greece this year, making it Greece’s biggest holiday company operating in the country. Venue DevelopmentsSimilarly to transportation links, Athens had to build from scratch more than London when it came to venues too. Greece was the origin of the Olympics so much was expected from the media and public from these games; to fulfil these expectations a building boom was initiated with the intention of constructing impressive venues which spread across metropolitan Athens. Seventeen of the thirty-four competitive and non-competitive venues were new constructions, with a further two venues being new-built but temporary. The costs correlated with the venues were estimated to be around €3bn (£3. 22bn when adjusted for inflation to 2012 and converted into Sterling). This was split into approximately €962m financed by the private sector; €1. 8bn granted by the Greek government; and €242m from the International Olympic Committee. With these huge costs, it is imperative that these venues are regularly utilised in the years following the Olympics to at least cover the maintenance and operation costs. Table 1 shows the post-Olympic use of the venues and Table 2 shows the cost and rate of returns of the venues.
The ‘Private’ columns in Table 1 assume that the managers of these venues are aiming for profit maximisation whereas the ‘Public + Private’ assume that other objectives are made by managers, such as providing cheaper rates to disabled teams for example, so these figures are only estimates. The table makes for bleak reading for those pro-hosting the Olympics as, of all the venues, not a single venue will make back over 8% of the cost of the venue (including construction, maintenance costs, operating costs and depreciation) in a single year, assuming profit was maximised which is very difficult and unethical to achieve. When using the more realistic and achievable figure in the ‘Public + Private’ column, the rate of return on all costs is even lower, with none of the venues achieving more than 2. 5% per year.
After the close of the Games, 2,292 apartments were offered at the Olympic Village at a reduced price to workers on a low-income, beneficiaries of the Workers’ Housing Organisation and a modern town of about 10,000 residents was envisaged making it the largest single property development in recent times. However, many of the ‘lucky’ winners who entered a ballot to be able to move into the housing feel short-changed. A resident with a young family admitted they “bought the dream”. The new schools and nurseries in the village that were promised before the Olympics were never delivered, meaning nearby schools are oversubscribed. The once picturesque setting of the green parks and clean pools around the village are now overgrown and daubed by graffiti. There have been sewage problems and cracks are appearing in some of the buildings, linking back to the rush to complete these outlandish projects. Now the Olympic Village is scarcely populated, stripped of everything of value including marble tiles and copper wiring by vandals. Many of the main venues in the Athens 2004 now have tenants, such as the Athens Olympic Stadium being host to Panathinaikos FC and AEK FC football matches as well as some Greek national matches and several events and concerts. The Galatsi Olympic Hall was the fortress of fellow basketball team AEK Athens until 2006 when it was leased to the private sector to create a shopping centre. The International Broadcast Centre followed a similar pattern, leased from 2006 to create a shopping complex called Golden Hall.
A success story was the redevelopment of the Schinias Olympic Rowing and Canoeing Centre following the Games by German construction company Hochtief; it is one of only three venues in the world approved by the International Rowing Federation. The results can be seen: Greece have sent more rowing athletes in the most recent four Olympic Games since Athens 2004 than the previous twenty-three Olympic Games. Also, Greece had never won a rowing medal ever before 2004 and yet have won three medals since then. The new facilities at the centre are clearly inspiring the next generation and can give them the experience they need within their home country, making the sport much more accessible to many. The other main problem is, there is simply not enough demand for some sports in Greece. The Hellinikon Olympic Complex consists of six venues and is largely desolate, which stands as a monument to the over-spending of the venues at Athens. Once innovative in that it used salt water rather than fresh water to inundate the venue, the Olympic Canoe/Kayak Slalom Centre has been drained since the tournament and remains in a state of disuse.
The basketball stadium used to be the home stadium of three basketball teams but currently has no tenant, the fencing hall no longer hosts sports instead hosting conferences, the baseball stadium was converted into a football ground for amateur third division side Ethnikos Piraeus FC, the hockey stadium is abandoned, the softball stadium has been vacant since the Games due to a lack of demand. In fact, neither hockey or softball has been played at the stadia since the closing ceremony. In recent years, these two stadiums have been temporary home to refugees, with the United Nations Refugee Agency constructing tents on the pitch and the seats in the stands that were draped with national flags and now used to hang out clothing for the estimated 3,000 refugees in the Hellinikon Olympic Complex. There have been plans to reinvigorate the Hellinikon Olympic Complex and the surrounding wasteland from the disused airport into a seaside town with estimated costs of €7bn. The town (around three times the area of Monaco) will include shops, hotels, and a 494-acre park if built however these plans have been shelved recently due to the downturn in Greece’s economy. The town would house the above-mentioned 3,000 refugees who fled from war from the Middle East and Asia and provide 75,000 thousand jobs in the construction of the metropolitan park, according to the official project website. This supply of jobs is crucial for Greece, who currently have an unemployment rate of 20. 1% of labour force; for context, the UK has only 4. 0% of their labour force without a job. London had a much clearer plan of its post-Olympic use and its sustainability. This can be seen by the Venues Guide posted on the gov. uk website for which I will be using figures from; the document has a well-defined proposal for the post-Games use for each venue with a myriad of information in the public domain. In comparison to Athens, London created thirteen new venues with another three being new but temporary, out of thirty-eight venues.
The UK’s established sporting venues played host to many events, meaning they incurred no construction or renovation costs as they are all being used by professional sports clubs. London were also more shrewd than Athens in that they only installed temporary seating to venues that would not be used as a competitive venue post-2012 such as the BMX track and Riverbank arena, saving on costs and not leaving the venue with high maintenance costs. The Copper Box Arena had 430,000 visitors in 2014 for events such as Sport Relief, National Paralympic Day events, the FA Futsal Cup final and has a number of resident clubs including London Lions Basketball Team and Great Danes Handball Club. The Lee Valley White Water Centre, which played host to canoe slalom events in which Team GB dramatically won gold and silver, sees over sixty thousand visitors through its doors every years and membership numbers rising for kayaking, canoeing and rafting activities. A teenager from the housing estate within a stone’s throw of the venue is now on the Team GB Talent identification programme after being introduced to paddlesports through an anti-social behaviour diversionary project, showing a clear pathway to elite level sport through the use of these state-of-the-art venues. The Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre was improved following the Games, re-opening to the public in 2014. It now has ten tennis courts and two of the best hockey pitches in the country, attracting 65,000 people to the centre in a month. The overall costs of £2. 38 billion is around two thirds of what is spent on Athens venues, but it must be noted that £1. 1bn was spent on just the Olympic village compared to Athens which spent around a fifth on their Olympic village.
The astronomical cost of the Olympic village is in some part due to the legacy of it, as the Olympic Delivery Authority installed a kitchen into each of the 2818 new apartments. Around half (1,379) were handed over to local housing association Triathlon Homes to accomodate around six thousand low-income Londoners from surrounding boroughs such as Hackney, which was especially important following the 2008 financial crisis. The other half was rented out to create an ‘East Village’ community on a previously desolate part of London. Five new neighbourhoods with 6,800 homes are planned on the Park by 2031, showing the long-term benefits of having a clear structure. There has been a huge need for especially affordable housing in recent years in London as the city keeps growing financially, making the large cost of the Olympic Village justifiable in my opinion. The centre of events such as Jessica Ennis-Hill’s heptathlon and Mo Farah’s gold medal wins, the Olympic Stadium, has had some dispute on the post-Olympic use of the facility. The annual tenancy cost of £2. 5m per year on a ninety-nine-year lease to football club West Ham United on the surface seems like great value to them rather than to the taxpayer. This is especially reasonable to the London club given that the Hammers only contributed £15m of the colossal £323m cost of extending the roof and building retractable seating to go over the running track, so the move does not come at the expense of match-day atmosphere. The seats need to be retractable due to the running track being needed for athletic events over summer. It is estimated that just the process of moving the seats forwards, and back to their original position will cost an eye-watering £8m each year. Despite West Ham now being at one of London’s iconic landmarks, their fans have been vocal about their discontent of the move. Crowd troubles, pitch invasions and riots have become a regular occurrence on match-days.
So, both the supporters of West Ham and the taxpayers are unhappy about the tenant of the stadium, but this doesn’t paint the full picture. To name just a few, in only the past three years the stadium has hosted six 2015 Rugby World Cup matches, concerts including Robbie Williams and Beyonce and the 2017 World Athletics Championships as well as agreeing to have two Major League Baseball matches in 2020 which shows that the venue is rarely empty and is going some way to recoup the mammoth £701m overall cost, when taking into account the renovation costs. To summarise, I think that Athens will look back at the venue development process in regret in the sustainability of these venues. It was almost inevitable that building a permanent stadium for softball and hockey wouldn’t be a viable option given the popularity of those sports in Greece, and instead should have used temporary seating. London clearly learnt Athens’ lesson in that their basketball arena was built as a temporary stadium that could be dismantled given that London has no professional basketball teams.
The London venues, as shown, are getting lots of use commercially as well as giving youngsters the opportunity to practice, and using the venues for their proposed use, sport. London managed to use their Olympic Village to help meet the shortage of housing in the city, creating a new area that was previously barren wasteland. Athens clearly paid the price for not having a structured legacy on some of the use of its venues which are now rotting away previously pristine stadia. The words white elephants come to mind. This is disappointing that many venues are now either desolate or serving a different purpose as, even if some of the venues stayed open for their original use and could be used by amateur clubs, though this doesn’t rake in the cash that selling to private sector does, can inspire the next generation in that field, as seen by the rowing example. The benefits of doing so are priceless. Not only on the pitch success, it could help save costs on their national health service on fundamental problems such as obesity by youths being involved in sport. I believe that Athens missed out on a big opportunity here.
