I kinda hate this because I love the Olympics, but I am starting to think that the Olympic movement may have reached the end of its value and relevance. This may be more true for the winter than summer games, but the combination of staggering cost, horrific corruption, crass commercialism and overall professionalization of sport, not to mention the ability of modern communications to allow people to experience the sports they love wherever they're happening is bringing the days of the Olympics-as-King of global events to a slow close.
I suspect we're going to see fewer and fewer democratic societies bidding on the games. Fewer games in Atlantic-friendly timezones, and more professional sports removing themselves from the event.
Soccer already doesn't send their best and hasn't for years, hockey is on the way there, it wouldn't surprise me if Basketball followed suit in two or three Olympiads. The thrill of going to the Olympics is going to become (more) tainted as the sites move more and more often into repressive, developing countries seeking to buy good press and jump-start infrastructure projects.
I may be way off base, but it wouldn't surprise me if people look back in 40-50 years at the Sydney-Tokyo stretch of summer games and the Nagano-Pyongchang stretch of winter games as the high-water-mark of the olympic movement.
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