Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 (in 2021) Review - A Bronze Medal Finish

[ChaseB]

As we get closer to the oddity that is going to be the (hopefully somewhat safe)...

Written By: Robert Kollars

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[MickelCL]

Here’s something that’s hiding in plain site at any Olympic Games but is probably little-known to those not deeply involved: there are events that don’t actually take place in the host city.

At every Summer Olympic Games (well, except St Louis in 1904), there are a few - and often a lot - of events that take part away from the host city. This is also true of the Winter Olympics but I haven’t gone through that data.

Usually this is for practical reasons (like sailing, you gotta have that water for that sailing or people WILL GET HURT), or to make use of better existing facilities (riding, rowing, canoeing and shooting often fall into this trap - that’s a shooting joke for you there). Sometimes though, it’s simply to spread Olympic joy further around the host country. This is mostly done with football during recent Games, a total of 57 cities in all, many hundreds of miles from the heart of the games.

I wanted to know the full number (and where they were), so I dug in and had a look.

Here’s what I found…

In total, I’ve found 117 different towns/cities/locations that have played host to official Summer Olympic events away from the host city itself. Working out what is and isn’t in the host city isn’t an exact science (LA and Tokyo are especially fiddly blobs of never-ending cityscape), but I’ve tried to only include places that are not obviously in the host city or its outer limits. Or at least places where it would be stretching it, and a bit annoying, to tell people you lived in the host city if, for example, you actually lived in Aldershot AKA the location of equestrian and modern pentathlon during the London games of 1948.

In smaller countries, and for smaller cities those places creep closer than they do for the aforementioned London, LA, or Tokyo but I’ve tried to stay consistent. I may have failed dismally but hey, I’ve tried.

As an aside, I missed out additional locations that were taken in only during meandering cycling events and the marathon unless the entire race took place away from the host city.

SOME NUMBERS

The 117 locations break down as:

13 sailing locations
57 football venues
47 locations for all other events.
On the map (linked below, I will make you read to the end to find it), the sailing and football venues are separated out on different layers. Football because there are so many of them, and the approach is explicitly to move the event around. Sailing because some cities can’t really help not being by the sea.

SOME EXTRA INFO
Here is how to watch Olympics online: https://www.ivacy.com/blog/watch-olympics-online/

There are Olympic host cities over the years that have played host to events in years other than the year in which they were the host. I haven’t detailed these on the map because that’s not what the map is for (though I have included all host cities for reference), but for completeness, the locations in this category are:

Melbourne: host to football during Sydney’s 2000 games
Amsterdam: host to sailing during the Antwerp 1920 games
And, maybe most well known… the equestrian events for the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 took place in Stockholm due to quarantine regulations in Australia.

[SQI]

Such a crappy game, with no single player career. Beijing 2008 and London 2012 look like masterpieces next to it.

[Eyeman79]

Remember the button mashing fun that the original NES Track and Field was ? At least until someone got the NES Advantage Controller with the auto turbo button.

So how do they handle the team sports in this? do you play the whole game or the whole tournament or are you inserted into key moments in a game?

[anivia]

It's a bit disappointing when my favorite team doesn't win the title