Small Victories for Sochi?

We are all aware that the Olympics are on.

First of all, I’m not going to discuss the irrational homophobic tendencies that Russia is participating in at the moment, although I am sure it may be connected to what I’m going to talk about somehow. Jazmin did a great job at informing us about all of that in her blog. If you are unaware of the turmoil, take a look at Jazmin’s blog here: http://anygivensundae14.blogspot.ca/2014/02/this-isnt-just-olympics-controversy.html

Second of all, I actually am not a huge fanatic of the Olympics, though there are many great (and otherwise) things that come with the sports of the Olympics.

What I want to talk about is more so the conditions of Sochi and the complaints attached to these conditions. This is to say that Russia is not quite under control governmentally and economically that it simply does not compare to our wonderfully western privileged lives. Wherever the Olympics is being held, that city and country has to sacrifice an immense amount of their budget to impress the rest of the world. Sochi, which has put so much effort into developing new hotels and other accommodations for these visitors, cannot afford doing so. It seems foolish that a government that is in so much economic despair would build massive amounts of buildings just to be used for two weeks then they will become abandoned and all of that money will go down the drain. But will it?

Having the Olympics in a place that is maybe not doing too hot financially might actually boost the economical state it’s currently in, by attracting tourists and bringing in worldly money and investors. But, would they be making any profits off of this after all of the money they have spent on hosting this huge event? Would they even break even? Collectively, probably not. But they may have some small victories.

Let me break it down for you: say Saskatoon has been chosen to host the next Winter Olympics. Awesome right? Let’s look at how awesome this will be. Say there is approximately fifty hotels in Saskatoon and each hotel can hold 1000 people. That’s a total of 50,000 people that Saskatoon can accommodate without developing any new hotels. However, the Olympics attracts millions of people. So, in order to accommodate that Saskatoon would have to build a crap-load of new hotels. You know who has to foot the bills for that? The residence of Saskatoon. Our taxes would be unaffordable. As a student I can barely afford that as it is already. So, like the billion dollar light-bright Bridge we have in Saskatoon, all of that tax money would go to waste the month after all of this stuff as built. But the hotels that have already been built would be doing splendidly, and so would the already well established businesses. Those are the small victories. But, collectively we'd have to spend more money putting up hotels and taking them down when they go out of business than we would need in order to break even.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that the people of Sochi are proud of their home, despite all of its flaws, and put in a good effort to accommodate these visitors with all that they had. The people who have travelled there should have expected that this city was not going to compare financially to the past few Olympics. So the curtains are falling off of the wall and used toilet paper can’t go down the drain, but remember all that the residence in Sochi have sacrificed in order to have visitors there to compete in some friendly sports and to put their city on the map. And hopefully the coffee shop around the corner from that brand new hotel makes a lot of money so that it can make one small step towards a better economic future for Sochi as a whole.

Hopefully all of that governmental shit that Russia is going through will change though. Am I right?

Until next time,

Dillon