Photo: Courtesy Of General Secretary For The Olympic Games

MIXED EFFORTS, MIXED RESULTS

Lavish spending and intentions of impressing the world drove preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Delays, political indifference, and legal and bureaucratic obstacles plagued construction for the 2004 Athens Games. The 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics marked the first “greening” of the games. Atlanta 1996 was a break-even effort, largely privatized, with only eight new venues. The Los Angeles 1984 project, with only two new, corporate-sponsored venues, was debt-free, unlike the earlier Montreal and Moscow Games.