Olympic Venues: Where Are They Now?

Who knew that the fates of many Olympic venues mirror the narrative arc of an E! True Hollywood Story? While cities such as Albertville and Calgary continue to make full use of their Olympic facilities, other host cities have seen the massive infrastructure built for the games abandoned as quickly as it appeared. And we’re not referring only to Sarajevo. In today’s Telegraph, Malcolm Moore tells London the cautionary tale of Athens. The host city of the 2004 games is home to once shimmering Olympic venues that are now “fly blown, closed to the public, and covered in graffiti.” Turns out that spending over $15 billion on the games failed to spark an enduring Greek interest in such sports as kayaking and beach volleyball.

The infrastructure, which was installed in such haste, has proven to be far too extravagant for the city….A few miles outside the city centre, the sprawling Faliron complex that once hosted the beach volleyball and taekwondo competitions is deserted and a lone security guard has not been able to deter youths from spraying the walls with slogans.

Elsewhere at Hellenikon, piles of rubbish are mounting behind heavily padlocked gates and electrical cables hang loose from the walls. On one bridge, every light fitting has been wrenched out, while crumbling concrete is ubiquitous, a sign of the speed at which the complex was built.

However, one of the 22 venues constructed for the Athens games remains open. The former badminton stadium is now a theater that has hosted the likes of Swan Lake on Ice and Jesus Christ Superstar. We can only hope that the latter was a site-specific production, because we hear King Herod had a mean hairpin net shot.

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