Why athletes are turning the 2024 Olympic village into a City of Flight (2024)

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Why are athletes turning the 2024 Olympic Village into a city of flight? ›

Swiss rower Celia Dupre said that athletes from most nations have opted for hotels instead of the Olympic Village due to the complex being too far from event venues in a TikTok.

The Olympics can bring a range of benefits and drawbacks to its host city. Countries and cities are often compelled to bid for the privilege of hosting the games, in hopes that it will stimulate the development of infrastructure, draw tourisms dollars, and boost employment.

Olympic Villages are built to house all participating athletes during the two weeks of the Games, as well as officials and athletic trainers. After the Games are over, the Olympic Village is typically sold or rented to the local population and turned into a new residential zone for the host city.

With breaking, sport climbing, skateboarding, and surfing all earning roster spots in the 2024 Paris Games, their promotion sadly means that multiple sports are getting the boot. Come July, three sports will be absent from the City of Light, including karate, softball and the heavy hitter, baseball.

Team USA women's tennis players and South Korean swimmers are said to have headed for the exits. But some competitors enjoy daily life inside the village complex.

The cost of hosting the Olympics almost always exceeds the estimated budget. The Paris games are already expected to exceed the originally budgeted cost in the bid by at least 115%. Note: Costs only include direct costs related to the sports infrastructure and events. Costs are in real 2022 US dollars.

For just over two weeks, it will accommodate roughly 14,000 competitors before housing 8,000 during the Paralympic Games this month. These are elite athletes — and they understandably receive their perks.

This declining interest prompted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to award the 2028 Olympics to Los Angeles, the only other bidder for the 2024 Games, without undertaking a public bidding process. The reduced interest in hosting the Games has been influenced in large part by negative public opinion.

Still, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its supporters contend that hosting can raise a city's global profile and generate economic benefits through tourism and investments in infrastructure. Recent games have highlighted the ongoing debate over the costs and benefits of hosting such a mega-event.

€4.38bn for the Paris 2024 Organising Committee budget; 100% private funding for the organisation of the Olympic Games; IOC allocation: €1.2bn (including TV rights (€750m) and TOP partnerships (€470m)); Ticketing / Hospitality / Licensing: €1.4bn (ticketing (€1.1bn), hospitality (€170m), and licensing (€127m));

Why can't athletes leave the Olympic Village? ›

A U.S. Olympic Committee spokesperson said it's not uncommon for its athletes to choose not to live in the village for a number of reasons. Some start in the village and leave for training, to stay with family, or go to their competitions further away.

Over the next two weeks, the Olympic Village in Paris' suburbs will house more than 14,000 athletes—but LeBron James won't be one of them. Neither will Stephen Curry, Breanna Stewart or any of the other men's and women's basketball players representing Team USA at the Paris Games.

In most years, USA Basketball, the sport's national governing body, has placed its athletes in luxury hotels outside the Olympic ecosystem, as it did at the Tokyo Summer Games in 2021, although the players' accommodations at two previous Olympics, in Athens in 2004 and in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, were a bit more exotic, ...

Winner: Denver

The original sites submitted in the 1970 bid satisfied a requirement of proximity to the Olympic Village (at the University of Denver). Later that year on 7 November, Colorado voters rejected partially funding the games in a referendum, and for the first time a city awarded an Olympics rejected them.

UCLA has been selected as the site for the Olympic Village for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Olympic athletes and support personnel will be housed in student residence halls on the Hill, with some Olympic events taking place at facilities like Pauley Pavilion and the Los Angeles Tennis Center.