We want bread not circuses?: this slogan, raised by the city?s inhabitants, had derailed the Toronto Olympic bid in 1996. Men and women from the city, smarting under the disastrous impact the Games had on Montreal in 1976 were opposed to it from the very beginning. Without any significant attempt at integration by the bid committee, Toronto soon found itself being relegated to the status of an also-ran in the competition to host the 1996 Games. Toronto, history proves, is hardly an exception. The relationship between bid cities and mega sporting events has always been mired in controversy. Do mega sports events contribute to host city development? Will Beijing, having spent a mammoth 42 billion dollars, benefit from hosting the Games in the long run? Will the facilities constructed for staging the Games turn into white elephants in the not too distant future or can they be harnessed for the welfare of the city?s inhabitants?

There?s little doubt that once the Games are over the Beijing organisers will be faced with questions like, ?What will happen to the newly constructed stadiums in future?? ?Will the money spent turn out prudent investments in the end?? or ?How will the investment impact the ordinary tax payer in the country??

All the answers will be anecdotal, in the immediate future at least. To be fair to the organisers, as insiders, it must be awfully difficult for them to confess that the Olympics might indeed leave behind a negative legacy in the long or medium term. It is incredible to note for example that a bullet train was started only to link Beijing with Tianjin, the venue for Olympic soccer and a city some 130 kilometers away. Millions spent on the project may well end up being a bad investment. On the other hand the gargantuan Olympic village, which is expected to serve as new housing for the city?s inhabitants will help scale down the escalating real estate prices in Beijing. Whatever the ultimate outcome, there?s little doubt that the Games, which stood on the margins of chaos before they commenced and then went through much better than expected, will end up transforming Beijing for all times to come. But this transformation will impact the well-being of the already poor sections of the city, a lasting legacy of the 29th Olympiad.

A look at the experience of some of the Olympic host cities makes clear the fraught relationship between host city development and the impact of hosting the Olympics. Sydney, for example, personifies the negative impact. Sydney Olympic Park, which housed Olympic athletes in 2000, now stands derelict. In fact, getting to the Park, some 40 kilometers from the city, is an ordeal. It takes driving down Paramatta Road for almost an hour to reach the Park, which had promised much before petering out to be a complete white elephant. The ordinary taxpayers continue to bear the brunt of this investment and real estate prices in Sydney are at an all-time high. Even as a tourist attraction, Sydney Olympic Park has little currency.

Barcelona, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. With careful planning and excellent implementation, the city serves as a perfect model of what the Olympics can do if facilities constructed for the Games are properly harnessed for the city?s populace. Not only does every tourist who visits Barcelona visit these facilities, it is also well documented that the Games village contributed significantly to solving the housing problem that plagued the city in the 1980s. Even the stadium, which hosted the opening ceremony in 1992, has since served as the home of the RCD Espaniol team, which ensures its regular use.

As is argued in social science circles, the long or medium term impact of a major international sporting event on host societies is perhaps its most venerable legacy.?To echo and adapt?a?celebrated comment by Renaud Donnedieu de Valises, French Minister of Culture on the legacy of the modern Olympics: Each Olympic city has?had appropriate pride in its national, regional and urban traditions and roots, while at the same time it?has shared a common global Olympic heritage of creativity, innovation and positive purpose.

And it is this question of national pride that is uppermost in the minds of the Games organisers in London, especially after the spectacular success of Beijing. As documented by Gavin Poynter and Iain Mercury, ?On January 29th 2008, the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee met to discuss ?London 2012? with Tessa Jowell, the government minister with responsibility for the Games and London. The committee was questioning government ministers, civil servants and 2012 officers for the fourth time about the Games in a little over three months.? The committee?s primary concern was/is the escalating cost of the Games, an interest that was stirred by government announcements in March 2007 that the cost of the Games was set to rise from an initial estimate of ?2.4 billion to a revised budget of ?9.3 billion. To quote Poynter and Mercury again, ?The additional money was to be raised through a further commitment by government of ?6 billion (including ?2.2 billion from the national lottery, of which ?675 million was extra funding). The revised costs were driven by several factors including the rising price of land remediation, the increased allocation to contingency, tax (the imposition of VAT) and the rising costs of security. To address this cost problem, government and the Mayor of London, committed in November 2007, to the sale of Park land post-2012 to offset any deficits that might arise from the event not covering its costs.?

Despite agreeing to spend much more than was initially anticipated, London might still fall short of achieving its objectives. With the legacy of the Games being linked to challenging the underlying social and economic problems of East London ? the skills deficit, lack of jobs, health inequalities and the lack of available and affordable housing for local people ? time will only tell if London 2012 results in the scale of urban regeneration that is being envisaged.

Such doubts arise because prospective host cities have, to make their bids more fashionable, started incorporating social goals into these bids, not taking into account the responsibilities associated with implementing such large scale projects. To quote Poynter and Mercury one final time, ?The bids are designed to win the competition, the reconciliation of aspirations set down in the candidate file with the financial framework required to deliver them really commences after the winning city is announced. The potential gap between aspiration and reality is filled, according to IOC regulations, by guarantees underwritten by the host city and nation governments. The bidding process itself creates the capacity for the confusion of event and non-direct event related investment ? the former being expenditure related to putting the event on and the latter being the investment in infrastructure that may strengthen the bid but not be attributable to meeting its direct costs.?

While speaking of Olympic host cities of the past and future, it will perhaps not be out of place to shift focus and look at New Delhi, which is getting set to host the Commonwealth Games in 2010. With the Commonwealth Games village being built by demolishing slums on the Yamuna riverbed and with the displaced slum dwellers not properly catered for, Delhi 2010 is a sure site for protests with civil rights groups and NGOs once again questioning the prudence of hosting mega sporting events. Some think that such questioning will hinder Games preparations, while others say that only because of the Commonwealth Games will the poor and the displaced get a chance to be heard. To go a step further, more than the medals won or records broken, such actions using the sporting stage make major international sports events like the Olympics what they are: events that bring into focus complex issues of inter-cultural communication and understanding, which, under normal circumstances are hardly ever debated in the public domain.

The relationship between host city development and mega sporting events will continue to depend on the city?s ability to market itself as a key tourism destination following the event and also on its ability to harness the facilities constructed for the Games for its residents. This requires the opening up of new tourist markets and sustaining them over time. Spurred by such intentions, Olympic candidate cities for 2016 ? Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo ? have already embarked on projects of community integration and urban regeneration. Here?s hoping that Delhi, which is way behind in its preparations for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, learns a lesson or two from them.

The writer is a sports expert