LOS ANGELES — When it comes to pushing the constraints of a budget, nothing quite matches the Olympics.
It's likely to happen again at this summer's London Games, although Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, considers that notion to be rubbish. In fact, he believes there's a chance the Summer Olympics will turn a profit.
That suggestion is at odds with a recent report by Britain's Sky News that the actual cost of staging the Olympics will be five times the figure originally provided when London won the bid in 2005.
"No, no, no, please," said Rogge, who was a featured guest at USC's Conference on Sports focusing on the Olympics on Wednesday. "These are wrong figures."
According to Sky News, the projected figure of 2.37 billion pounds (about $3.71 billion) will now be more than 12 billion pounds, or $18.8 billion, and could reach 24 billion pounds.
The public sector funding package, which is used primarily to build venues and provide security and policing, was increased to about 9.3 billion pounds in 2007, Sky News said. But another 2.4 billion pounds was added for new costs such as the Olympic Torch relay programs and financing additional anti-doping control officers.
Rogge, however, said the figures are separate and that the budget barely has budged.
"There is an operational budget that stands at 2 billion pounds," he said. "The operational budget will break even or even yield a profit. There is an infrastructure budget, paid by the government, that's 9.3 billion, and this will include the remediation of East London, the building of new roads and the legacy of the future. But it's not five times.
"The budget has been approved (in) 2005 and 2006, and it has not moved since then. You have to look at it not as an expense, but as an investment."
Still, there's no arguing the fact that the Olympics don't come cheap. And once the Games are over, what's left behind is little more than empty and unused stadiums — hardly investments in the future.
Although Rogge insists the Olympics are a legacy to the cities that host them, it isn't always the case. China spent a record $43 billion on the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but its massive 91,000-seat National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, is little more than a tourist attraction. It's being used now as a snow park.
The 2004 Athens Olympics are regarded as an epic boondoggle in Greece, where 21 of 22 venues remain abandoned.
So how will London be different?
"You have a derelict, polluted part of London that has been totally remediated," Rogge said. "They are building an Olympic village for 17,000 dwellings, which will be sold to the general public as affordable housing. There are new roads, new Metrolinks, new industry coming, and the total remediation of this big piece of land. That's what I call a legacy and an investment."
But when it's pointed out to Rogge that that hasn't been the case in Beijing or Athens, he simply says, "We are keen on legacy and sustainability."
Maybe that will be one of the primary challenges of this Olympics. But there's no denying that spending often reaches excessive amounts. Consider that last month it was revealed that 335,000 pounds, or more than $524,000, of taxpayer money was spent on a single sculpture for the Games.
