The Olympics story

Some six score years after the first modern summer Olympic Games in Athens, the 31st Olympics, held in Rio de Janeiro, have come to a close.

More than 11,000 athletes from 207 national Olympic committees competed in the Games. Three hundred and six sets of medals were awarded in 28 Olympic sports. The US topped the table with more than 100 medals, as it has done (in total medals) for several Olympic Games now. The US, China, Russia, Germany and France have typically been at the top of the medal table. The most improved nation in the past few Games has been Great Britain, which has raised its tally from the teens in 1996 to over 60 total medals in London and Rio. India’s ranking was 50th in 2008, 55th in 2012, and finished in the 60s in these Games.
The first few modern Games were not organized on the basis of country. Athletes marched behind their national flags for the first time in 1908. The classic marathon distance of 26 miles and 365 yards was fixed at the 1908 London Games so that the finish line would end at the Royal Box. Abhinav Bindra, India’s lone individual gold medal winner so far, set the cat among the pigeons by tweeting that it costs Great Britain £5.5 million for each medal, implying that India will need to do the same to increase its tally.
London is the only city to have hosted the Olympics thrice, Paris and Los Angeles have done it twice. New York has never hosted the Olympics. Tokyo will host for its second time in 2020. Nowadays, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) begins the process of choosing a city about nine years in advance and concludes the discussion in two years, in a process governed by the Olympic Charter. Shortlisted cities are scored on 14 major criteria that span Games competition and venues to accommodation, transport, finance and marketing.
In an excellent backgrounder The Economics of Hosting the Olympic Games, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has laid out the revenue, capital expenditure and operational cost of recent Games. The mere cost of submitting a bid runs between $50 million and $100 million. 
    DNA
Total costs have risen from about $3.6 billion for the 1996 Atlanta Games to an estimated $20 billion for the Rio Games. Beijing spent a whopping $45 billion. Each city in recent times has overrun the cost by a factor of two or three times the original estimate. Security costs during the Games routinely average over $1 billion. Revenue, that covers less than a third of the costs, comes from television, sponsorships and licensing, but the IOC retains a healthy chunk.
DNA

The Olympics story

Some six score years after the first modern summer Olympic Games in Athens, the 31st Olympics, held in Rio de Janeiro, have come to a close. More than 11,000 athletes from 207 national Olympic committees competed in the Games. Three hundred and six sets of medals were awarded in 28 Olympic sports. The US topped the table with more than 100 medals, as it has done (in total medals) for several Olympic Games now. The US, China, Russia, Germany and France have typically been at the top of the medal table. The most improved nation in the past few Games has been Great Britain, which has raised its tally from the teens in 1996 to over 60 total medals in London and Rio. Indias ranking was 50th in 2008, 55th in 2012, and finished in the 60s in these Games. The first few modern Games were not organized on the basis of country. Athletes marched behind their national flags for the first time in 1908. The classic marathon distance of 26 miles and 365 yards was fixed at the 1908 London Games so that the finish line would end at the Royal Box. Abhinav Bindra, Indias lone individual gold medal winner so far, set the cat among the pigeons by tweeting that it costs Great Britain 5.5 million for each medal, implying that India will need to do the same to increase its tally. London is the only city to have hosted the Olympics thrice, Paris and Los Angeles have done it twice. New York has never hosted the Olympics. Tokyo will host for its second time in 2020. Nowadays, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) begins the process of choosing a city about nine years in advance and concludes the discussion in two years, in a process governed by the Olympic Charter. Shortlisted cities are scored on 14 major criteria that span Games competition and venues to accommodation, transport, finance and marketing. In an excellent backgrounder The Economics of Hosting the Olympic Games, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has laid out the revenue, capital expenditure and operational cost of recent Games. The mere cost of submitting a bid runs between $50 million and $100 million. DNA Total costs have risen from about $3.6 billion for the 1996 Atlanta Games to an estimated $20 billion for the Rio Games. Beijing spent a whopping $45 billion. Each city in recent times has overrun the cost by a factor of two or three times the original estimate. Security costs during the Games routinely average over $1 billion. Revenue, that covers less than a third of the costs, comes from television, sponsorships and licensing, but the IOC retains a healthy chunk. DNA