It will be a tale of two cities. While the lasting legacy of the Athens Olympics could be a monumental debt that the Greek people will have to pay for decades to come, organisers of the Beijing Olympics promised they will never leave behind a debt-ridden city for its people. 'The Chinese people will never have to pay for the 2008 Games. Although we anticipate that budgeted costs will go up and we will have to spend more than estimated, these costs will all be absorbed by our marketing programme,' promised Wang Wei, secretary-general of the Beijing Organising Committee for the Games of the 29th Olympiad (Bocog).
In a bid to trim costs the Beijing organisers are reviewing all their venues, including the Olympic Stadium (or Bird's Nest), on the advice of the International Olympic Committee, which is urging all future host cities to curb spending, and promote austerity measures.
'Upon the advice of the IOC, which has said we need to look at ways to cut costs so the host city is not burdened by debt, we are now looking at all our venues again. We are looking at ways to use more temporary venues and use existing venues as much as possible,' said the 54-year-old Wang.
Athens nervously raced to meet deadlines. They completed their showpiece stadium just a few weeks before the Games began and cut corners at various other venues - including scrapping the roof over the swimming pool. However, Beijing has already done most of the spadework, with almost two-thirds of the 35 venues completed, nearly built or renovated.
'We, too, will have 35 venues for competition. Thirty of them will be in Beijing and 15 of them are nearly built. A dozen of them are being renovated and we hope the rest will be temporary venues. But right now we are reviewing all our plans and trying to use existing facilities wherever we can.'
A far cry from Athens where 80 per cent of the facilities were brand new, with only the balance being renovated or rebuilt. This resulted in overall costs - for everything from infrastructure, sports facilities and security - ballooning to an estimated US$9 billion (HK$70 billion). This figure could haunt Greek taxpayers for at least a decade, according to analysts.
'Our construction budget is in the region of US$2 billion to US$3 billion,' said Wang. 'And we won't be spending as much as Athens did on security. Our aim is to be prudent and that's why work on construction is halted temporarily.'
