Ben Fischer
One fun part of the Olympics is how much the local flavor of each host city stands out in all the operational details. Unlike the Super Bowl or the World Cup, it’s a major event that is still driven primarily by local organizers rather than a standardized approach.
While many at the International Olympic Committee have come to believe that’s a weakness, it’s still a fact of life and it makes every Olympics a completely new experience. Now that I’ve attended Pyeongchang 2018 and Rio 2016, I think there are two very different buckets to consider when we compare and contrast host cities.
In one bucket, we have the intrinsic appeal of the location: Is the host city a dynamic, lively place that’s easy to get to and pleasant once you’re there? That’s where Pyeongchang was limited and where Rio excelled.
In the other bucket, you have the actual job performance of the organizing committee. And that’s where we have the exact opposite: Rio 2016 made the least of a glorious situation, and Pyeongchang 2018 made the most of a rather forgettable locale.
I got to thinking about this distinction just before I left Pyeongchang on Friday, when I was saying goodbye to Bill Hancock, executive director of the College Football Playoff. As usual, he was on vacation helping out the U.S. Olympic Committee’s media relations department in Korea. He has some experience managing major events, so I always appreciate his insights.
“People had confidence that things would work here and be precise, and they have been,” Hancock said. “So people were free to enjoy themselves without the burden of worrying — ‘When I come out, will there be a 9:45 bus, or will it leave at 10:45 instead?’ And you can just enjoy yourself so much more if you realize you don’t have to worry about those kinds of mechanical things. There’s enough to worry about in a different country that you don’t need the extra added burden of uncertainty.”
Hancock made a really great point.
Rio was spectacular in many ways: the gorgeous weather, the beaches, the food, the fun-loving culture. … But I could never quite relax because the smallest things were such hassles. Pyeongchang had its fair share of challenges too (all Games do), but I never lacked a fundamental faith in the organizers, which completely changes your outlook.
From the time I got on the ground in Korea, the Pyeongchang volunteers were exceedingly helpful and friendly. And outgoing. Several longtime reporters remarked to me how the entire Korean people seem to have “come out of their shells” since the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics, providing service with a self-confident smile and extraordinary competence. This permeated Olympic operations. Security checkpoints, food workers, the media relations staff, bus drivers — they all did everything they could.
They couldn’t make up for the fact that it was really hard to get a taxi, or that no restaurants were open in my neighborhood after 11 p.m. even though Olympic reporters routinely get home after midnight. They couldn’t make up for the lack of foreign fans, or the shortage of hotel rooms that caused many Korean guests to take the train back to Seoul at night instead of hanging around to liven up the social scene. They certainly couldn’t make up for the absence of the NHL, or the lack of U.S. medals.
But they did their very best with what they had, which after all is the whole point of the Olympics, as embodied in the Olympic Creed, adapted from a sermon by modern Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin: “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”
Our Korean hosts fought exceedingly well. I’ll miss them.
