The real tragedy of the olympics is cities all over the world competing for years, wining and dining the IOC as they jet around the world to select the host cities.

Then the lucky "winners" spend a fortune that they often don't have, building facilities they don't need, to use for three weeks of competition, then close them down and leave them to turn into rotten eye-sores. For proof of this, just look at any recent host city, staring with Athens.

Surely the time has come for Athens to reclaim the Olympics and become the permanent home, stopping all the host-city nonsense, building facilities all over the world that won't be used again, and giving the Greeks a reason to keep the existing infrastructure in use from one competition to the next.