Olympic Dreams

We live in a mythological society where fiction is valued more than reality. A recent editorial in the Lake Placid News, wistfully pining for another Winter Olympics in the Adirondacks, illustrates this. The editors infer that Lake Placid won an Olympic-class competition for the games in 1980, beating out the best of the rest of the world, because of its miraculous ability. The reality is that Lake Placid was the only bidder for the 1980 Olympics.

The selection was made for the 1980 location in 1974. Back then, no one wanted the Olympics anywhere near them. Other countries 'no-bid' because they were afraid of being a terrorist target. The infamous Black September attack on the Israeli team at the Summer Olympics in Munich occurred only two years earlier, in 1972, and the gigantic 'Event Security' apparatus of today hadn't been invented. Lake Placid's innovation was to build the Olympic village as a prison, with the athletes locked down under armed guard. The facility was  designed to eventually be converted into a federal prison - the current Ray Brook Federal Correctional Institute.

The Olympics are usually a financial disaster for taxpayers. Businesses make lots of money from all the construction and concessions. Their profits are privatized, and any losses are socialized. The 1980 winter games were supposed to be run at a profit but they ran up such a large debt that NY state eventually had to pony up an $8 million bailout. 

Nowadays, $8M is a government-bailout rounding error (or, half of Derek Jeter's salary) but it was a tough sell back then. The supposedly free-spending and liberal Carter administration (another myth) had enough - the feds already sank $90M into the games. So the NY taxpayers were stuck with the tab, as the 1600 unpaid creditors, most with political connections, wouldn't tolerate an Olympic bankruptcy. In another bygone-era transaction, the state actually received something in return - the skating facility that Eric Heiden and US Hockey Team immortalized (no mythology there!) and Lake Placid's two majestic ski jumps. The ongoing maintenance costs several million dollars per year, so there was still a sucker element to the transaction.

In 1980, the games cost an incredibly low $150 million, about as much as we throw away every 12 hours in Afghanistan. Chicago recently flared off $100 million to simply prepare their (unsuccessful) bid to host the 2016 games.

The current 2014 winter games in Sochi have a widely reported, but mythological, $50 billion price tag. The actual amount is probably closer to half that, but it's still 300 times the cost in 1980. 

Lake Placid (along with Innsbruck and St. Moritz) has the distinction of hosting two Winter Olympics, Lake Placid's earlier one was in 1932. There's plenty of mythology surrounding those '32 Olympics. One example is the chest-thumping comparisons of our exceptionally free and open society, as compared to the overt racism demonstrated during the 1936 summer games held in Nazi Germany. To buy that version of history requires ignoring the racism, notably antisemitism, that was socially acceptable in the nominally free and tolerant northern states - particularly in the more exclusive resort areas. But antisemitism during the 1932 winter games is another story for another day. 

Can Lake Placid snag a third Olympics? First, the usual cast of characters (corporations, governments, one percent-ers) would have to be shaken down for the dozens of billions required to host an Olympics. Then, the-businesses-that-run-the-government would have to convince the voters that this is, somehow, in their self interest. The few (but noisy) citizens who care about such things will have to be persuaded that the monumental debt, the further ruination of 'forever wild' lands, the transportation nightmare, the hyper-commercialization, and the lock-down security requirements will somehow improve their quality of life. In the techno-mythological world we live in, these are mere marketing details.

The masses can be reliably be counted on to support - via higher taxes - events that they can't possibly afford to attend. (Franklin County, which borders Lake Placid's Essex County,  has a lower per capita income than Mississippi.) The Sochi ticket site proudly advertised that 85% of single event tickets will cost less than $300. Such egalitarianism! No worries, the common folk can satisfy their Olympic participation dreams with used ticket stubs, such as this one, for only $100 on ebay.