Toronto & the Olympics

[toforumer]

Toronto & the Olympics

With all this talk about Expo. I'm just wondering, do members here think Toronto will bid for another Olympics and eventually win one? Will hosting an Expo first help Toronto's quest to win the hosting rights to an Olympic games? I'm just curious what all of you think of Toronto hosting and do they actually have a chance at winning. What year would they have a good chance?

Also I'd just like to add, it's pretty funny how the Olympic Spirit closed down. Why would you open a place like that in a city that has no Olympic history whatsoever besides two failed bids for '96 & '08.

Thanks, and look forward to everyone's input.

 

[afransen TO]

Will it host eventually? Probably. Any time soon? Who knows.

I think the general consensus is that the 2030s are a time when Toronto will have a shot. Basically 12 years after the next American Olympics. I would argue that Toronto has a chance to challenge the US on the next round of bidding, but with the Expo business, it's looking less likely.

It could be 2030s or 2060s (if they still happen by then). Who knows, really? I don't think the stars will align again in the near future, though.

 

[tudararms]

There are a lot of people in this city hoping for some major international event. Not necessarily for any perceived cachet of the event itself or for any potential profit or payback, but mainly for the resulting momentum in action and government funding to secure long-ignored infrastructure improvements and development for the city.

 

[spmarshall]

The Super Bowl earlier this year got Detroit a lot of money for downtown development and landscaping, and I must say after being there last and this week it looks good, even six months after said one-day event. Pics are coming I am not a big fan of Toronto getting the Olympics, but it would certainly get that momentum going - I am a bit more receptive to the proposed Expo bid, though.

 

[toforumer]

Don't you think Expos are so irrelevant this time of age? It would be great for our waterfront no doubt but I'm skeptical on the success of an Expo in Toronto.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

"Don't you think Expos are so irrelevant this time of age?"

That's a risk we seem to be willing to take...there's no guarantee that any innovations will be on display. Olympic cities are not soon forgotten, since every 4 years after the fact our name would be thrown around constantly. I'd be very impressed if someone could name all the Expo cities since Montreal, or even Vancouver.

 

[adma]

 

[toforumer]

That is so true. The majority of people can remember Olympic cities better the World Fair city. The only cities off the top of my mind that I can state that has hosted a Worlds Fair is: New York City, Paris, some shitty American cities, Vancouver, Montreal, I can't remember the rest. Some Japanese city hosted it last year and I can't even remember the name of the city. That tells you alot.

With the Olympics I can easily name atleast 20 cities right away

 

[toforumer]

That's the "shitty American city" I was refering to before. Haha, I remember that episode of The Simpsons. Knoxville, Tennesse right?

 

[spmarshall]

Knoxville it is!

Also, the shitty Cities of Chicago (the Columbian Exposition of 1893, a precurser and a later Fair) and New York (twice). St. Louis had it too, IIRC.

 

[toforumer]

Toronto lost their previous bid to some german city that is not internationally well known, Hanover. I'm sure its more recognizable now after the Fair and hosting some World Cup matches. But how the hell did Toronto lose against them the last time out?

 

[adma]

some shitty American cities,

The two Chicago World's Fairs weren't exactly "shitty American city" level--nor were many of the others before WWII.

Besides NYC, I guess the last vaguely non-shitty American World's Fair was Seattle in 1962. (And some might claim that the 64-65 NY World's Fair was the *first* of the shitty ones, i.e. the magic moment when the sheer cardboard crassness of Cold War American masscult made itself evident--Robert Moses' inglorious twilight, after all.)

 

[toforumer]

There's a reason why America's 3rd or 4th rate cities are bidding and winning Expos nowadays.

 

[jeicow]

^ US cities can no longer host an "official" World's Fair. Congress decided to stop paying the fees to belong to the bureau and as a result has lost it's ability to host a sanctioned event. That being said, there have been about 4-5 fairs that have happened that weren't sanctioned so really, if TO doesn't win it, it might as well keep going with it.

 

[adma]

There's a reason why America's 3rd or 4th rate cities are bidding and winning Expos nowadays.

Though when's the last of those? Essentially, it's a matter of San Antonio '68, Spokane '74, Knoxville '82, and New Orleans '84. Maybe even Vancouver '86, though that wasn't half bad and perhaps showed there was still life in even the second-string Expo idea--but IIRC there's been nothing in the Americas since.

Call Expo-mania, or at least its American incarnation, just another victim of the 60s mass socio-cultural upheavals. It's certainly noteworthy that the US took a meta-World's-Fair approach to its Bicentennial (i.e. allowing all of America to be its own best fairground); a generation earlier, a sequel to the 1876 and 1926 Philadelphia fairs might more likely have been forecast. Likewise, plans for a 1993 Chicago World's Fair were stillborn...