[chemgear]

From the Boston Olympic bid, they looked into the insurance and ended up cancelling their bid.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...BEP/story.html

“In the insurance world, eliminating all risk is the equivalent of cold fusion or the perpetual motion machine,” said Tom Baker, a professor of insurance law at the University of Pennsylvania.

Patricia A. McCoy, a Boston College law professor, was more skeptical. While Boston 2024 can cobble together many plans to cover a variety of hazards, she said, insurers will not simply promise to protect taxpayers from any financial risk.

“Insurers do not cover risks that are certain to materialize, and almost every Olympics in the recent past has had major cost overruns,” McCoy said. “Any suggestion that private insurance will pick that up is smoke and mirrors.”

Said one senior executive at a national insurance firm: “There’s no wraparound, no Band-Aid that says, ‘OK. You blow the budget by $1 billion and the insurance steps in and funds that.’ It doesn’t exist.”

The bid committee, however, acknowledges it cannot obtain an insurance policy that would cover voluntary changes in the scope of a project, such as last-minute enhancements to make a bigger velodrome.

The committee also cannot insure against overly rosy budget projections — for example, if the bids for the velodrome come in higher than the $64 million budgeted for that venue. Boston 2024 officials said they have addressed that danger by using realistic estimates in their budget.

Vancouver, host of the 2010 Winter Games, famously had to step in with taxpayer money to finish the athletes village, after the project lost financing in the global recession.