Well, the Olympic Games are history....

Well, at least the Athens 2004 Olympic Games are over while the Greek political system continues to be an imbroglio for foreigners as well as the local people, the venues, completeness, quality, and services of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games surpassed the games hosted by many other cities held previously including those held in the United States.

Some questions you might want to think about:

• Is it worth the trouble to turn a city upside-down to sponsor an Olympic Game?
• Should any country be awarded the status of sponsoring the Olympics?
• Why not stop the commercialism of the Olympics?
• Do the athletes appreciate the amount of effort by so many people to create and prepare an Olympic event?
• Do people appreciate the Olympics?
• Are today's Olympic Games honorable?

Originally, I thought that the Olympic Games were the acumen of sports in life, the extraordinary efforts required by athletes to train and prepare themselves both physically and psychologically for the ultimate test that sometimes can and will be their only test to attain the world's greatest awards; recognition and the Gold medal.

After the Olympic Games, I still believe that the games are the greatest highlight of an athlete's efforts.  I also believe that each and every athlete that participates in the Olympics and finishes whether in first place or last deserves respect and recognition by the country they represent.

Should any city be allowed to host the Olympic Games?  No, definitely not.

An example of these situations are the short-term funding of projects that leave little or no benefit to the Greeks such as multiple stadiums that are now simply deserted relics like the stadiums of the ancient sites of civilizations now gone.
As a reward for the short sightedness of the Greeks, extraordinary taxation is now imposed on the entire country in such a way that I can only compare it to buying a house and paying for it within five years or less by a population of approximately 10M citizens.

What cost the Greeks 12 billion Euros (and probably more) should not have been spent on the Olympics when less than half of that could have been used to modernize the entire infrastructure of the country with a lesser burden on the people.

For another recent example, we have the bid of New York City to build an overly priced stadium at the cost of the taxpayer's there but again with the promise of recouping the cost from all of the visitors.  The same promises were made by the Greek government and are just as futile because there is no guarantee that Olympic spectators are going to do anything else like add to the tourism of a country than simply go to the games.

If a city wishes to host the games, they should start preparing for them beforehand and have at least 60% of their infrastructure completed before they are allowed to submit their entry.   For a country like Greece, the birth-place of the Olympics, the hosting of the Olympics was analogous to Brazil hosting the Mardi Gras.

My message here is that the abuse of using the Olympics to create the infrastructures of cities is encouraging the profitization of the competition that is being forced upon the athletes.

If we want the Olympics to be honorable and a true competition without drugs, then the commercialization of the games should stop.