Expert blog: Olympic legacy? Why despite talk of a progressive approach, problems were still evident

The dust has settled on the Olympic Games for another four years, but did we see evidence of the Olympic legacy we hear so much about?

In the autumn of 2017, the IOC broke with tradition by simultaneously proclaiming two host cities: awarding Paris the 2024 Summer Games, with Los Angeles staging the 2028 Olympics. This unprecedented declaration followed multiple high-profile bid retractions, leaving Paris and Los Angeles the sole remaining candidates.

Thus, whilst the world’s largest sporting mega-event unarguably still commands enormous global popularity, there has been a marked decline in bidder interest due to wider public and institutional knowledge regarding the downsides of hosting the Games.

And yet you wouldn’t have known it reading the IOC’s Coordination Commission Pre-Games assessment, which trumpeted Paris as an exemplary model for future Olympics. Indeed, the Paris  Games were billed as the first to be fully aligned with the reforms central to the Olympic Agenda 2020. The latter being the IOC’s roadmap, claimed to safeguard the Olympic values and underscore the role of the Olympic Movement as an agent of change.

Paris 2024 – not unlike its predecessors - promised much. There were nods to sustainability and inclusivity that the organisers hoped would project a new vision of France and its capital city. There were aspirations that the Games would be the leanest to date, predicated on a commitment of repair and reuse, with 95 per cent of the competition venues being pre-existing or temporary. This would be the first-ever Olympic Games with gender parity in terms of the same number of places have been allocated to female and male athletes by the IOC.

Conversely, for all the grandstanding by the organisers regarding their green credentials and claims to leverage the Games to make society more inclusive, it is hard not to conclude there are double standards. The decision to outlaw French athletes from competing with sports hijabs at the Games, for example, revealed the discriminatory hypocrisy of the French authorities and the infirmity of the IOC who refused to overturn the ban. Meanwhile, critics exposed the duplicity of the ambition to deliver the ‘greenest ever Games’ when according to environmental campaigners just three of the Games’ sponsors would produce more pollution than eight coal plants running for an entire year. And, of course, the very notion of athletes, sponsors and spectators travelling from across the globe undermined any claims around this being a ‘green games’.

Meanwhile, scratch beneath the veneer of the IOC’s self-aggrandizement and you’ll find burgeoning criticism of the Olympic Movement. The last 20 years have seen a discernible increase in the number of critical journal articles and books on the Olympics by authors such as Jules Boykoff and Helen Lenskyi, as well as an uptick in anti-Olympics activism as campaigners mobilise against the global corporate juggernaut. As such, while the Games used to be framed as a catalyst for leveraging investment, and a tool for ‘nation branding’ and public diplomacy, substantial question marks are now placed against the promises of how a host city and country may benefit from the Olympics.

For example, history has debunked the basic economic argument that hosting the Olympic Games is a significant wealth generator. Instead, examples of astronomical overspending are replete – what author Jules Boykoff labels as ‘Etch-A-Sketch economics’ – where the bidders state that the Games are only going to cost so much, but they cost dramatically more. The London 2012 Games bid pinned costs at £2.4 billion, only for a Sky Sports investigation to suggest the true cost to total £24 billion when Games-related infrastructure projects were included. The 2014 Sochi Winter Games reportedly racked up $51 billion in spending - originally slated to cost $12 billion – more than all previous Winter Olympics combined.

Another problem brought on by the Olympics is the forced evacuation of vulnerable populations to make way for Games venues, and gentrified urban renewal. The sheer scale of displacement due to the Olympics can be staggering. According to the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, preparations for the Beijing Olympics resulted in over a million people being removed from their homes, often without adequate compensation. Rio de Janeiro similarly witnessed intensive displacement ahead of the 2016 Olympics, with 77,000 people evicted. There were comparable accounts of ‘social cleansing’ in the lead up to the Paris Games. According to a report by the group Le Revers de la Medalille (The Other Side of the Medal) there was a 39 per cent increase in encampment evictions, illustrating the displacement of migrants and rough sleepers, without providing longer-term housing solutions.

An oft-cited critique directed against the Olympics is the apparent disconnect between the overtly celebrated ‘legacy’ projects – manifold public benefits that remain longer than the event itself – and the reality, which invariably falls someway short. It is for this reason Boykoff avoids the legacy tagline, preferring the phrase ‘promises and follow through’. For instance, the London 2012 bid was grounded in a popular belief that the Games would help to introduce an additional one million people into regular sports participation. To date however, there is no empirical evidence for a legacy of enhanced physical activity due to hosting the Olympic Games.

As for the longer-term impact of Paris 2024, only time will tell, but if past is prologue, I am not convinced that we saw the green, inclusive, and financially responsible Games that were touted. What we do know, with any degree of confidence, is that the legacy of this hallmark event will attract considerable interest for both researchers and practitioners.

In short, the Paris 2024 Olympics – for all the talk of the organiser’s progressive approach – presented specific conundrums for progressively minded people. The problems which are endemic to the Olympics were very much in evidence: we saw displacement, marginalisation of the most vulnerable communities, criticisms of greenwashing, and indisputable overspending.

Everything we have been told about the Olympic legacy, yet again, turns out to be nonsense.