Wider means weaker for Olympic staging success

The reforms tabled by the German head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) include changes to the sports program, moves to promote gender equality, and plans to set up a digital channel to promote Olympic sports between the Games.

Perhaps most ground-breaking among all #link:http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Olympic_Agenda_2020/Olympic_Agenda_2020-20-20_Recommendations-ENG.pdf:40 items# concerns the bidding process. Host cities would be allowed to hold events in both the summer and winter editions outside of the designated city or country, "notably for reasons of geography and sustainability" in the words of Thomas Bach.

But while Bach's proposals should be welcomed and passed on Monday and Tuesday, the IOC must tread a fine line between making the Olympic Games affordable and sustainable, and enabling each organizing committee to forge its own identity and legacy.

Money talks

The biggest driver here, of course, is money. The vote comes amid heightened concerns over staging costs that prompted several cities to pull out of the bidding for the 2022 Winter Games, leaving only Beijing and Almaty in the running.

And as the Reuters news agency reported on Saturday, there are even whispers that 2018 hosts Pyeongchang could move some sliding events from the South Korean city to Japan, to save it the expense of building a venue that will likely go unused once the Olympic caravan has passed through.

Issues concerning the financial and sporting legacy of a Games cannot be ignored, especially after the black holes and white elephants created by Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and now Sochi 2014.

But neither can the people who will eat, sleep and breathe the Olympic movement for years before and after it lands on their doorsteps; the hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of an Olympic host city who must take ownership of a Games for it to be truly recorded as a success.

This common goal should unite the summer and winter hosts as surely as climate and topography separates them, but not so in the 30th Olympiad. Londoners came to terms with the projected increases to their council tax bills and daily commutes to belatedly embrace the 2012 summer Games as no other city had before, with the possible exception of Sydney in 2000.

But while Sochi 2014 was an object exercise in branding, scheduling and administration, to those who attended it was ultimately a sporting extravaganza staged without a soul.

Sochi or Adler?

Officially, the IOC could take comfort from a job well done. Sochi overcame a late rush to complete venues (is there not always?), justifiable unease over Russia's human rights record particularly with respect to the gay community, and the annexing of Crimea to deliver what Bach called an "excellent" Games.

Except that the Games were not even held in Sochi. The coastal venues were instead clustered an hour along the Black Sea coast at Adler, a sleepy resort of 75,000, while the ski slopes and sliding center were sited a further hour away at Krasnaya Polyana in the Russian North Caucasus.

As such the down-trodden residents of Adler faced five years of upheaval to their lives, only to find "their" Olympics branded with the name of another town. "Where is this Sochi I see on the lamppost banners?" I thought to myself for the first fortnight that I was there. "Where are these Games we have paid so much for?" seemed to be the question etched on the faces of all those on the streets of Sochi.

Now the IOC president is suggesting that the Olympic Games can be broken up and farmed out even further, to beyond the national borders never mind the city limits.

A sub-contracted Games?

Will this lead to bidding wars within wars? To the sub-contracting of Olympic events to the highest bidder? The most iconic Olympic Games venues are those set against a recognizable backdrop: recall the diving pool at Barcelona 1992 or the beach volleyball stadium on Horse Guards Parade in London. The best Olympic Games are those which keep the venues close and bring people together, not build them apart and disperse them.

Bach issued a final call for support on Sunday to the IOC members arriving in Monaco for the two-day IOC general assembly, warning that "we are not living on an island" and that the Olympic movement must "act now to remain relevant or risk being forced to change by others."

For certain the reforms proposed by the former Olympic champion fencer must not be foiled, but Bach must also guard against a devaluation of the greatest show on Earth.