Feeding the athletes is another major responsibility of the Organizing Committees. At Montreal in 1976, for example, a staff of 1400 served over the 16 day Olympic period a total of 1135 tons of meat, fish and vegetables. It worked out as a daily average of 8lb (3.5kg) and 5200 calories per athlete – served in a 24 hour cafeteria larger than two football fields.
And at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, a team of 135 chefs prepared some 60,000 meals each day. The fresh food was delivered daily from more than 100 suppliers, and included an order for 45,000lb (20,400kg) of meat every day. Kosher food is prepared for Jewish contestants (in Rome in 1960 this was supervised by the city’s chief rabbi) – and Muslims look after the kitchens providing food for their fellow Muslims.
But the number of cooks (300 at the 1964 Tokyo Games, for instance, recruited from Japan’s top hotels) is greatly exceeded by the number of interpreter – guides needed for each Game. Almost 1000 interpreters, well-versed in sporting terms, attended the athletes in Tokyo. And by the time of the Seoul Olympics, 5000 interpreters were on hand. Their duties included acting as translators for the National Olympic Committees, the hundreds of assorted diplomats, and more than 1000 journalists. Over 30 languages were spoken – including the IOC’s two official languages: French and English.
In addition to this in 1988 almost 30,000 South Koreans volunteered to serve without pay as guides, ushers and ticket sellers. A thousand English-speaking inhabitants met foreign visitors at Seoul’s modern airport – many of whom became guests in the volunteers’ homes during the Games.
In whichever country the Games are held, the weather frequently plays a key role. In Los Angeles in 1984, for example, smog occasionally threatened to blot out one event or another; and in Helsinki, Finland, in 1952 – when the Soviet Union took part in the Olympics for the first time – the threat of cold and snow had to be taken into account. So at each Games an international team of meteorologists issues up to 20 bulletins a day. As a result of the forecasts, some of the events have to be hastily re-scheduled – usually to avoid gales, hail or rainstorms.
Equally important are the ‘sports bulletins’, or computerized results services, which flash out the Olympic results and times. In Tokyo’s vast National Stadium, for example, the electronic scoreboard was big enough to display up to 500 letters or numbers at once. And the timing device for the track events was timed to one-thousandth of a second.
But no matter how carefully the Games are planned, there is always something that goes wrong.
Montreal was a prime example. The main Olympic Stadium – in 1976 the world’s largest prefabricated structure – proved a major problem. First of all political quarrels, and the complexity of the design, delayed the start of fitting together the stadium’s 11,770 concrete pieces. Then three months of union strikes, slowdowns and walkouts – staged to gain substantial pay rises for the construction workers – brought work almost to a halt.
Blizzards and plunging temperatures – the wind-chill factor hit a low of -63 (-53 – intensified the holdups. Some of the 3550 workers had to fight wind gusts of up to 60mph (96km/h) and accidents cost the lives of at least 12 men. Because of all this, turf was still being laid in the stadium on the morning of the opening ceremony.
Once the various Games are over, the task of dismantling the villages, or converting them to other and profitable uses, begins. In Munich, for instance, the Olympic Village was originally divided into two sections: one for men and the other for women. Today the men’s section has been sold or rented out as living accommodation – and the women’s section is used as a students’ residential hall.
Mounting the Olympics is a highly expensive business – it cost $8000 million to put on the Moscow Games in 1980 and a ‘mere’ $850 million to stage the Seoul Games eight years later. Much of the money comes from the governments concerned, as well as from local businesses, and contributions from the cities’ residents.
Television rights
However, the rewards can be equally impressive. The Seoul Games made a record profit of almost $500 million – more than twice the profit made in Los Angeles in 1984. The bulk of the Seoul profit came from the sale of television rights – the USA alone paid $325 million.
The modern Olympics were inaugurated in Athens in 1896, when their founder, the French scholar and educator Baron Pierre de Coubertin, coined the slogan. ‘Not to win, but to take part’ – which is quoted at the opening ceremony of each Games.
The words of the late Avery Brundage are also recalled: ‘The Olympic Movement is a 20th-century religion. A religion with universal appeal which incorporates all the basic values of other religions. A modern, exciting, virile, dynamic religion!’
Picture Credit : Google