What are the effects of the olympic games. Intro

Introduction

        Olympic games are one of the biggest and most popular Sporting events in the modern world. The games started in Ancient Greece but the current sporting modern format was born in the nineties^[1].

        The competition, in which multiple professional athletes are competing in a variety of sports, is easily the most awaited of all sportive events, with a frequency of a Game every two years, alternating each time between the winter Olympics and the summer Olympics^[2]. Organized by the IOC federations and many others national Olympic committees, the games often involves more than 2000 athletes and the average cost is US$ 5.9 billion for the summer games and US$ 3.1 billion for the winter games, with a record held by the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games with a cost of US$ 21.9 billion^[3].

        Often spread out over a month, the organization of such a huge competition needs the construction of many stadiums and pools as well as an Olympic village, however the modifications on the selected city often go further than the spontaneous competition itself: new streets and hotels are built, significantly altering the city's original organization. The extent of such changes became obvious to me during my trip to Los Angeles when I saw how much the city was evolving in preparation for the 2026 Olympic games^[4]. New stadiums were built, streets were widened, and a vast area was already being prepared to become the Olympic village.

        After visiting Barcelona, Berlin and Los Angeles, I saw how a city could drastically change its aspect after the Olympic games. As I saw the massive changes in the city Marina of Barcelona, I started asking myself how the Olympic games could affect the local populations, how their lifestyle, situation and society could evolve. I really wanted to know how the city had evolved after one month of intense competition. The city could change forever, as was the case in Barcelona, or stay very much the same, like in London^[5]. The populations are the first concerned and affected by such an organization, as they represent the first spectators and host the foreign visitors. In such a context, I decided to write my TM on the Olympic games effect on  the social domain of the hosting city. (----->Definition of "social")

        I wanted to explore the social impact of the Olympic games, as it is  often overlooked. After a month of extraordinary popularity on TV, the city is forgotten and the fallout of the Olympic games seems to follow.

"...and social sciences, explorations of how the Olympics has been written and might be represented, seem long overdue."^[6]

        Due to these forgotten effects, I wanted to show how, and for how long such an event could modify the social organisation of a city.

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