5 Biggest financial disasters in Olympic history
Certainly, the highest veneration that an athlete can achieve has to be his/her name on the star-studded Olympics winners tally. The domain and aura of Olympics are majestic enough to enthral the whole nation as well as the entire world for the years to come. It can even be touted as a grand achievement for a Nation, enough to discuss it in the textbooks of the children.
Every country takes serious consideration before bidding for such a fervent International event as the successful event will increase the respect at the global level. There are several criteria that have to be fulfilled before organizing a grandiose event, which in itself are difficult to achieve.
Also, there are several factors which host nation considers before bidding including how it will help to grow the local economy, what type of image will be reflected on the International stage and how to convert such opportunity into an overall financially profitable event.
Bidding for hosting the various international events is highly inveighed whether it is about organizing FIFA, FIBA or U-19 tournaments or Olympics.
Even after so many checks and excellent expertise available with them, sometimes, the hosts are not able to pull off the event. Sometimes such situations are exacerbated to the extent of proving to be a complete debacle, more remembered for its failure than its success. These problems can arise from various sources such as financial mismanagement, events mismanagement or security failures. Herein, security failure is the most serious concern which the hosts must look for, as the reputation of the nation is at the stake.
Today we will go through such Olympics events, which ended up in a debacle in the modern-day Olympics. Here is my compilation.
#5 Berlin Olympics - 1936
An ardent athletics fan will certainly know what Jesse Owens did on track was more piercing than a bullet to Germany in 1936 Olympics. Though the 1936 Olympics was originally granted to Republican Germany in 1931 but finally ended up in the lap of the 'Fuhrer' after becoming chancellor in 1933.
Even the Olympic events became part of the Nazi propaganda and no one would have ever seen so many swastika flags in a place. Hitler had been quite vocal and evasively critical of the American team for their contingent consisting of Black Americans. There were several incidents when Hitler did not give the medals to the black Americans and even left the event in between just to avoid the winning ceremony of the Non-Aryans in the Berlin.
The idea of Aryan supremacy and anti-Semitism was jolted by Jesse Owen's four subsequent Gold medals in 100mtr, 200mtr, 100*4mtr and long jump. The despotic leader again faced another conundrum when British India team was 4-0 up at halftime against the host. Hitler immediately left the stadium as he could not see Germans losing. Dhyan Chand's men came victorious 8-1 against Nazi Germany.