London will be hosting the Olympic Games in 2012. Compare and contrast Essay

London will be hosting the Olympic Games in 2012. Compare and contrast the running of the last two Olympic Games and suggest how the UK might learn from this - Essay Example he two nations that were short listed for the event were Athens and Rome, and it was the case that Athens beat out its Italian competitor by 66 to 41 votes. According to Hansen (2006) Greece is the historic home to the Olympic Games with the first events being held between city states from approximately 800 BCE to 500 AD. However in the Modern context the first Olympic Games were held in Athens and the return was seen as being significant to the nation. A number of external factors hurt the progress of the Olympic Games in Greece. As argued by Itano (2008) writing for the Christian Science Monitor, the games brought about significant cost overruns that have not paid dividends in the long run. For example the games cost approximately U.S.$15billion which was spent upgrading the transportation infrastructure and to build new facilities yet the Olympic softball stadium arguably stands nearly unused and many of the redeveloped ecological parks developed after the games have been used by Roma as campgrounds. However not all the news is negative for the Mediterranean nation insofar as the nation established a new Airport which can bring with it significant tourist revenues, furthermore new metro infrastructure was built which serves approximately 600,000 people daily. However the financial distress brought about by the games as argued by the Examiner it was indicated that the 2004 Olympics in Athens helped fuel the European financial crisis because Greece had significantly over shot their budgets and had a poor showing in their audiences (Partly attributed to security concerns and post September 11th reluctance for people to fly). This situation made it difficult for Greece to borrow money to pay down other debts accumulated over the years which could be argued is linked to over spending at the summer Olympics. In regards to the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008, according to Wines (2010) it was the case that these Olympics were the biggest and most expensive Olympics