Geoff Manaugh wrote about car parking athletes:

• At the National Valet Olympics athletes sort through jumbles of keys to find the one for their vehicle, sprint across parking lots, pack luggage, and, of course, park cars.
• The equipment is intentionally imperfect. Luggage carts have broken wheels. Garages slope.
• It’s not always about speed. In one event valets “race” each other but aren’t allowed to exceed 10 miles (16 km) per hour.
• Companies send teams. Some will hold internal mini-Olympics to determine who to send.
• Men and women compete against each other. In 2015 Katie Richards of AmeriPark was the first woman to win the top title.
• For valets that often drive cars that cost more than their entire apartment the games provide a sense of recognition and achievement.
• There are several ideas to improve the games. Some suggest a social element with impatient rich customers yelling at the valets to perform faster.
• Others suggest an event where valets are challenged to fit as many cars as possible in a single space without scratching any vehicle.
• Plans for a winter Olympics have been mooted so that valets skilled in walking across icy asphalt can demonstrate their talents.

Read much more on The Atlantic.

For a while there it was unclear if we would ever be able to eat Greek yogurt again. But it seems like the Eurozone has figured out a deal, and Greece will stay in the European Union. Peter Berlin took a look at the role that being the host of the 2004 Olympics played in contributing to Greece’s current financial crisis.

• The games are thought to have cost Greece €7 billion, and the country continues to pay the debt from those games.
• Meanwhile the International Olympic Committee made close to $1 billion from the event.
• The IOC seems reluctant to award the games to countries that do things affordably.
• One solution would be to make a country – probably Greece since the Olympics originated there – a permanent host of the games.
• As Greece still has all the facilities from the 2004 games which largely sit unused, it would be a boost to the local economy, and would save other countries from expensive construction projects.
• The 2016 games in Rio, for example, are expected to cost €13.2 billion.

Read more here.

Source: Politico

Tony Manfred took a look at why the future of The Olympics might be a lot more authoritarian.

• Event organizers usually over-estimate the benefits of hosting The Olympics while the cost of the games invariably go over-budget.
• As a result of this voters are increasingly rejecting the idea of hosting the games in their city.
• A referendum in Poland led to the city withdrawing its application to hold the 2022 Winter Games, as did a vote in Germany.
• Other countries are either planning to, or have already, withdrawn their candidacy to be hosts.
• The remaining serious contenders are from Kazakhstan and China.
• They are, unsurprisingly, authoritarian countries that don’t have to pay attention to taxpayer concerns.

Read more over here.

Source: Business Insider

Sarah Zhang went behind the scenes at The Olympics and looked at how timekeeping was done:

• Omega, best known for its watches, is responsible for timekeeping at The Olympics – and most other major international sporting events.
• Omega deploys teams to Olympic venues several years in advance. There are already a couple of experts preparing for the 2016 Olympics in Rio, Brazil.
• Instead of a starting pistol an electron start system is used which sends out a flash of light and transmits a bang via speakers so all athletes hear it at the same time.
• Some athletes are fitted with small devices that track their time statistics and even any false starts.
• During a race experts monitor the key statistics, using numbers instead of player names to ensure impartiality.
• Different sports decide how they want to measure time. Speed-skating measures time to thousands of a second whereas Alpine Skiing only measures it to the hundredths of a second.
• However Omega still measures all sports to the same precision. Therefore while the Olympics registered the first ever tie for Alpine Skiing this year, Omega knows who the true winner was.
• All of this required heavy duty equipment. 50 miles of optical fiber alone is required.

Read more about the history of timekeeping, who we can credit for modern timekeeping techniques, infographics and more over here.

Source: Gizmodo

Brian Fung writes that we have NBC to thank for funding the Olympics:

• In the United States NBC has become the network known for carrying coverage of Olympic Games.
• It pays handsomely for this privilege – exclusive broadcast rights to the Winter Games in Sochi cost $775 million.
• This makes up 62% of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) broadcast revenue for the games.
• In fact if you look at past summer and winter games NBC is responsible for about half of the IOC’s broadcast revenue.
• This is despite the fact that there are 22 other broadcasters who pay for exclusive rights in other countries.
• This ultimately means that NBC is subsidizing a large portion of The Olympics.

See the share that NBC has paid for the Olympics over the years, and more statistics over here.

Source: The Washington Post

This coming February the Russian city of Sochi will host the 2014 Winter Olympics. The Economist took a look at how things are going:

• Sochi is one of the few places in Russia where snow is scarce. The organizers have stored last year’s snow in case it doesn’t snow enough this year.
• It is also close to the north Caucasus – a part of Russia that has been involved in a civil conflict. About as many soldiers have died there as American soldiers in Afghanistan, making it akin to holding the winter Olympics in Kabul.
• When Russia bid to hold the Olympics it proposed spending $12 billion to prepare Sochi – more than any other country.
• It is now estimated to cost $50 billion. While most Olympic games have cost overruns of 180%, Russia’s has gone over budget by 500%.
• Workers on the project make little money (when they’re paid at all) and sometimes have their passport revoked so that they can’t leave.

Read more about the Sochi Olympics, why Putin is looking to hold it there, and more over here.

Source: The Economist

Now that the Olympics are done and dusted who came out on top? Who disappointed? More populated countries should do better since they have more people who could potentially be star athletes. Richer countries should also do better since they can spend more on facilities and training. Using a country’s GDP and population numbers then, a list of expected medals per country can be created and compared with the actual medal count. Charlotte McDonald reports:

• Former members of the Soviet Union exceeded expectations. This is likely because of the strong sporting infrastructure left over from the days of communism.
• Small or low-income countries with a lot of depth in track and field events such as Jamaica and Kenya also did well.
• The US, UK and China did better than expected – and it shows – they dominated the medal tables.
• Countries with large populations and relatively large GDPs did badly if their per capita GDP was low. India, Indonesia and Mexico fall into this category.
• Countries with high income but no sporting tradition did poorly. They include Saudi Arabia and Israel.
• Countries that focus on the Winter Olympics such as Austria and Switzerland also underperformed.
• The countries whose success surprised all experts were Iran, Jamaica, and New Zealand.
• Those who did unexpectedly poorly included Germany, Brazil, and Romania.

The entire article has much more details and full tables. The examples presented here are just a selection of those discussed here.

Source: BBC

How would our athletes today have compared with the Olympic athletes from ancient Greece over two millennia ago? Brian Palmer found out:

• The first of the modern Olympics took place in 1896 and the ancient Olympians might have had a chance then. They would at least have been in the running for a few medals.
• However in the present our Olympians easily outshine the ancient Olympians. The discus record in ancient Greece was about 95 feet. The modern record is 243 feet.
• The exception is the long-jump. Ancient Olympics record distances greater than 50 feet, almost double the modern record. However this might be because of differences in methodology and the classification of what constitutes a long-jump.
• But the ancient Greeks had several things going against them which makes them difficult to compare to modern athletes:
  • They only trained for a few months before the games.
  • Dubious dietary supplements were used in attempts to boost performance.
  • The competitors had to walk 36 miles to get to Olympia, the home of the Olympics. This would mean that they were tired by the time they began to compete.
• But perhaps the ancient Olympians would have found a way to even the playing field. They were not above cheating or crippling their opponents.

To read more including some ancient Olympic records, how they compare to modern ones, the differences in how distances were measured, how some of the events differed, one way that the Olympics hasn’t changed at all, ancient training regimes, strange diets, hexes on opponents, and some of the forms of cheating and maiming that were prevalent, click here.

Source: Slate

The British economy is in trouble writes Matthew Yglesias. Could the 2012 Olympics help it?

• David Cameron, the Prime Minister, has stated that it should boost the economy by £13 billion over four years.
• Economists aren’t as certain. While tourism might increase because of the games, other travelers, such as business travelers who give an even larger boost to the economy, might choose not to come to England because of the crowds.
• Countries that host the Olympics see a 30% boost in their exports. However those countries that apply to host the Olympics, and then fail to get selected, also see the boost. Submitting an Olympic bid is a sign of modernization and globalization. This might be why China wanted to host the games. But actually winning the bid gives no advantage.
• The fundamental problem with The Olympics is that they encourage investment in sporting facilities – not urban or infrastructure development that would benefit the most people.

To read more about what it means to hold The Olympics in the time of austerity, why cities should use The Olympics as a way to dupe the political system, how The Olympics compare in a time of full employment versus high unemployment, why the 1992 Barcelona Olympics were a success, why the 1996 Atlanta Olympics were a failure, the cost per job created, studies about the topic, and what the British have to say, click here.

Source: Slate