Letter from Olympic City

Why do cities take the Olympics on? The visibility is usually ephemeral (what have you heard lately about Nagano?). They don't make a profit on the games; they hope to break even. After winter games, local governments are stuck with outsized luge tracks, ski jumps, and multiple ice rinks costing hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to maintain. Yet cities around the world compete ferociously to host the games. "The Olympics become an opportunity to seize for urban renewal," said Alessandro Guala, professor of social sciences at the University of Torino. "Not just for building new sports facilities but for improving city services and launching or accelerating the work on major projects like a subway. It's a moment when you can mobilize political forces and bureaucracies and get everyone to work together."