Modern Olympic Ruins

Thursday, 17 June 2010 | by Pat's Picks

The Wall Street Journal calls them the “modern ruins of Greece.” Many of the specialized sports venues built for the 2004 Summer Olympics have been abandoned. Many view the empty arenas as “visible reminders of Greece’s age of excessive spending” and say in hindsight, the country really couldn’t afford the Games. The paper says that because Greece got behind in the construction process, they were forced to build permanent structures instead of temporary ones. Their haste also made it hard to have a proper bidding process for the large scale building, further driving up the event’s bill.