It’s no secret that hosting the Olympics continues to cost more and more. Hosting these days requires 35 different athletic venues, Olympic villages, media centers, and upgrades to the host city’s transportation system. All ten of the past Olympic games since 2000 have gone over budget with recent ones each costing nearly 20 billion dollars. The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics notoriously went over budget spending $50 billion or five times the original amount.

Often once the Olympics finish, the cities aren’t sure what to do with the remaining buildings. The demand for beach volleyball stadiums, for example, just does not meet the required upkeep costs of these facilities. Because the cities cannot afford to maintain them, they fall into disrepair. The effects of this are even more pronounced in countries with massive economic problems like Greece. In 2009, the Greek sovereign debt crisis triggered a massive economic recession forcing the government to raise taxes and cut back spending. The effects of some of these policies actually furthered the crisis, and with nation-wide protests, the Greek government was in no position to upkeep Olympic stadiums that barely anyone wanted to use.

Due to these factors, many cities aren’t even bidding to host the Olympics anymore. In fact just bidding to host the Olympics can be expensive. Chicago spent $100 million trying to secure the 2016 Olympics which ended up in Rio de Janero, and just two cities bid for the 2022 games – China and Kazakhstan.

As the PyeongChang games come to a close, its important to look back at the excessive waste by recent Olympic games and ask ourselves: is this worth it? With Tokyo 2020 around the corner, this question will certainly be on the minds of many. The waste of the Athens 2004 Olympic games is an omen for future host countries showing how holding the Olympic games often leaves behind a graveyard of abandoned stadiums and monumental waste.

Abandoned Athens

I recently went on a short weekend trip to Athens from Bologna, Italy. Of course, I wanted to do the popular things like visiting the Acropolis or eating my weight in Greek food, but I was also looking for an adventure this weekend. Several years ago I had heard about abandoned Olympic stadiums in articles written by The Guardian, but I wanted to see these places up close for myself. So when I got to Athens, I began Googling – trying to find where these stadiums were located and how I could reach them. Many of them are no longer listed on Google Maps and can be difficult to find so I relied heavily on satellite view trying to scope out the stadiums. Many of them are located in a run down industrial area of Athens near the old airport.

How to get in

There are three main Olympic areas worth visiting in Athens. The first near the Elliniko Metro Station has the most abandoned sights including the softball fields, stadiums, kayaking course, and handball facilities. The second is the beach volleyball stadium along the coast, and the final area is inland next to the Eirene (ΕΙΡΗΝΗΣ) Metro Stop. This last one was the main Olympic area and most of the buildings are still in use today though severely in disrepair. This final one is accessible to the public, but for the previous two I needed to jump over a few fences.

Abandoned Stadiums

My day began by taking the metro down to Elliniko Station to visit some of the abandoned soft ball fields just a short walk from the stop. These fields were in surprisingly good shape and appeared to cared for. The stadium area is a bit crumbling, but the fields are mowed and there were locals playing there on Saturday afternoon. At the first stadium some Greeks were playing baseball, and at the second some men were playing a bit of cricket.

The back end of the stadium was a little less cared for. The ticket booths were still there, but most of the windows had been broken and glass littered the floor. The plants were over grown and taking back much of the area.

My next location was the kayaking course, but while close on the map it was actually quite difficult to reach. Much of the area around these venues was originally for the Ellinikon International Airport – Athens’s old airport. Due to this, there are huge fences surrounding the entire airport with barbed wire on top so its almost impossible to pass through. It’s also possible to do some urban exploring at the airport, but that was not my mission.

To get to the Kayak Stadium, I walked north towards the Argyroupoli Metro Station and then west through a small neighborhood to reach the kayaking entrance. From the road, I could see a little bit of the course but the entire complex was fenced off. The top of the fence wasn’t barbed, but it was slightly spiky making it quite difficult to scale. There were a bunch of old holes in the fence that had been patched up by security so those weren’t an option either. Fortunately I found large gate that must have been 12 feet tall, but on the top was rounded and easy to climb over. I quickly hopped over the gate and ran up the hill to catch a beautiful view of the kayaking course from the top of the spectator area.

I continued back down the hill and started walking towards the rest of the stadiums off in the distance. This place was truly abandoned. There was absolutely nobody there and I felt entirely alone. Most of the paths and roads through the area are heavily overgrown. Before reaching the next set of stadiums, I needed to jump over another small fence which was difficult but manageable.

The softball stadiums looked like an absolute war zone. As I got closer I soon learned why. One of the first things I saw approaching the stadium were large posters for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Why were there UN Human Rights Agency posters around? During the height of the European Refugee Crisis thousands of migrants and refugees were flooding into Greece from Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan. The government was cash strapped and didn’t know what to do with the people. As winter started to come, the government decided to house them at the abandoned stadiums because they at least had working toilets and showers. Many lived in tents on the fields and used the facilities inside the stadiums.

Now all that’s left look like the remnants of a humanitarian crisis – tent scraps strewn about the field while children’s paintings decorate the interiors of the stadiums. I saw piles of documents in multiple languages for people seeking international protection in Greece and even children’s shoes left behind in the stadium’s interior offices. The whole place was really creepy.

Besides this stadium, the LA Times also reported that refugees were housed in the nearby taekwondo complex. After the stadium, I continued wandering around the grounds checking out another stadium, a large Olympic ring monument, and the taekwondo and handball centers.

As I was trying to leave the complex, I saw some people in the distance walking into one of the buildings. I went up close to see what they were up to and learned that one of the buildings had a basketball court inside and local high school students were using it for weekend games. On the weekend a security guard opens the main gate and allows people to enter and use some of the facilities. He sort of gave me a puzzled look as I was coming from the opposite direction, but that was it. I just left through the main entrance like I owned the place.

My next stop was the Olympic Beach Volleyball Stadium. I rode the light rail along the coast to get there, but as I got off the train, the rain really started to pick up. The volleyball court can be quite difficult to access because there is a main highway that runs along the coast. All of the public transportation and shops are on one side and the stadium is on the opposite. There aren’t any nearby bridges to cross so the only way would have been to walk a long distance to a bridge and then cut through one of the marinas to get back to the stadium. With the heavy rain it wasn’t worth it for me, but perhaps on a nicer day, someone will try it.

Main Olympic Complex

On the other side of Athens lies the Main Olympic Complex called the Athens Olympic Park. This is where the center of all Olympic activity took place. The center has actually been around for quite some time in many different forms. In 1991 it hosted the Mediterranean Games and the World Championship in Athletics in 1997. While most of the Olympic sites have fallen into disrepair, the facilities here are mostly in use but in very poor condition. Some areas like the wooden bleachers around the pool are in such poor condition that they’re fenced off for fear of collapsing.

The gates surrounding the entrance to the stadium were designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. Calatrava also designed the velodrome, stadium, and other important sculptures and monuments on the complex. Calatrava also designed the World Trade Center PATH Station in New York City. The similarities between the two buildings are striking.

The center has a pool, diving well, basketball stadium, football stadium, and fencing facilities. When I was there dozens of youth teams were practicing and using the facilities. The place is quite run down, but people are at least using it. The Velodrome (for indoor biking) looked like it didn’t get much use but apparently they have occasional competitions there. One of the outdoor diving wells was empty and just had some stagnant water inside, but all the other pools are well kept and in use.

I was pretty much able to walk around this entire facility by myself. I think because it was a Saturday I might have had better luck as many others were there for sports practice. I found most doors to not even be locked. I just walked into the massive football stadium, for example. The doors were unlocked.

Athens Benefits

For many Greeks, the Olympics were some of their proudest moments, but unfortunately the abandoned buildings have now become an example of monumental government waste. Whether or not it is possible to host an Olympics in a “sustainable” way has yet to be determined. Some of the sports facilities are still in use in Athens which is good, but at the same time they’re much larger than they need to be and the upkeep costs are much higher than they would be with smaller facilities. One benefit, however, was the remaking of the Athen’s subway system. The Olympics forced the city to make critical infrastructure investments of which the benefits can still be seen today. Unfortunately that cannot be said about much else.

Future of the Olympics?

With all the cost overruns and more and more cities shunning the Olympics its reasonable to ask whether this tradition is sustainable. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) certainly understands this frustration, and they have made some efforts to make the games more sustainable and bring down the cost of bidding, but time will tell whether these efforts are fruitful.

The concept of building new complexes in countries like Brazil that really should be spending more money on their own people is a huge waste. Rebuilding all the facilities every four years just won’t work. Short of eliminating stadiums so fans can’t watch the games or cutting back on the number of events, this model is just not sustainable. It might be a source of pride, but it hurts these hosts countries in the long run.

A better model for the Olympics would be to use either one host city or a rotation of host cities for the games. This prevents waste and ensures that countries won’t be dumping billions of dollars into one-time-use stadiums. This is particularly important for the Winter Games which need reliable snow fall. The games shouldn’t be held somewhere like Sochi that may or may not have enough snow. Rather the IOC should pick locations that everyone can count on for the correct conditions. Hopefully by learning from the massive waste left behind in the trail of the Athens Olympics we can actually make changes to our Olympic model so countries will be less inclined to waste public funds on vanity projects instead spending them on their long-term development needs.