Pan Am Games Were a Success, but Toronto Should Think Twice About 2024 Olympic Bid

George Orton was the very first Canadian to win a gold medal. It was during the Paris Olympics in 1900, four years after the Olympics re-launched. Orton ran in the steeplechase and 400-metre hurdles, while Ronald MacDonald competed in the marathon. A top middle-distance runner in North America, Orton was crowned world champion in the 4000-metre steeplechase and won a bronze in the 2500-metre steeplechase—Canada's only medals of that Olympics. The 27-year-old from Strathroy, Ontario, who studied at the University of Toronto, was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame and the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame. Orton became a human vessel that connected Toronto to the Olympics for a brief time—for the first and only time 115 years ago. But that drought could soon change if Toronto submits a bid to host the 2024 Olympics and wins that bid. The question on everyone's mind: Is Toronto even capable of hosting an Olympics?

Mayor John Tory recently explained to Toronto media that he would sit down and discuss with councillors all possibilities for Toronto and its smattering of world-class stadiums. Whether that translates into an Olympic bid or hosting world competitions, he did not confirm. A new Forum Research poll, which surveyed 755 voters, found 61 percent of Torontonians interviewed are in favour of hosting the Olympics, 30 percent oppose it, while more than one million Pan Am tickets sold suggest Toronto residents are curious and enthusiastic about world games.

By and large, from what we saw at the Pan Am Games, hosting an Olympics would be spectacular. It would be the single greatest sporting event the city has ever seen, eclipsing the back-to-back 1992-93 Blue Jays World Series titles and anything the Maple Leafs won some 40-odd years ago. But before we get giddy, start rolling out the red carpet and get new haircuts to ready ourselves for the 2024 Olympic circus, there are a few things we must take stock of.

Toronto has a little over a month to submit its Olympic bid and would have to beat serious competition in Paris, Rome, Budapest and Hamburg. Boston abolished its Olympic bid, citing the burden of the cost to taxpayers, but other U.S. cities could still emerge as candidates. There's been recent speculation about Los Angeles, which last hosted the Summer Olympics in 1984.

The Pan Am Games cost the City of Toronto $1.4 billion and let's not fool ourselves, it would need to up the ante considerably for the Olympics. A bid alone is projected to cost at least $50 million, according to a feasibility report from January 2014, which pegged the high-end of the estimated cost of hosting the Olympics at nearly $7 billion. Plus, staying on budget is unheard of.

Each of the last three Summer Olympics cost north of $10 billion, with the 2008 Beijing Olympics approaching $50 billion—the Olympics isn't a cheap party. The Rob Ford era saw the city plummet further into multi-billion dollar debt by the end of 2013. And let's not forget, Montreal took decades to wipe clean the $1.5 billion debt it accrued from the 1976 Summer Olympics.

Previous host countries have had to build stadiums from the ground up, as with what happened in Sochi. For the 2014 Winter Games, $51 billion was spent but that included a build-from-scratch job—transit, infrastructure, stadiums, hotels—and rejuvenated a small sea-side city, something Toronto would not have to do if it won a bid to host. Vancouver, for example, when it hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics, allocated one-third of the $6.4 billion in costs to transit upgrades. Toronto largely has the stadiums and infrastructure, but logistically they don't intertwine as they should if hosting an Olympics. Building a world-class rail system that carries large quantities of people to anywhere they want to go will be Toronto's biggest hurdle. And if it can't get that right, the city shouldn't bid to host the Olympics.

Sydney spent $6.6 billion to host the Olympics in 2000. Most of that was thrown into building a world-class rail system that takes people from the airport to the city and everywhere else in between. For those Games, ticket holders could hop on a train and end up on the door of any stadium. For Toronto's Pan Am Games, buses were encouraged, we were told to avoid using cars, and train services to venues were non-existent. Toronto would need to come up with a better way of getting people from the city to the venues. It's current method, as trialled at the Pan Ams, is not of Olympic ilk. And therein lies the problem for Toronto: its a city with a bunch of shiny new toys that we can't all enjoy because they are spread out like satellites in the sky and are time consuming to get to. If Toronto's Olympic-ready stadiums were placed in one hub, like a sporting neighbourhood—one example London; a second example Melbourne—a push for an extensive rail system wouldn't be as pertinent.

To be successful, Toronto would need considerable investment into redeveloping existing stadiums, building new ones and making use of stadiums that already exist. For example, using BMO stadium as a track and field arena seems more logical than York University, which is a 45-minute drive from the downtown core and slightly more to commute by transit. Also a new modernistic Olympic stadium is a must to host opening and closing ceremonies and can be used by Toronto FC and the Argonauts after the Olympics—or, potentially an NFL team if the league expands north of the border. BMO can be home to rugby, cricket and other sports. Adding a central stadium to the city would make it easier to include new sports to Toronto. Consolidating Toronto's stadiums will need to happen in order to work out what to build and what to renovate. Then the next question: where to build new stadiums? It needs to be downtown—and not east of the city in the suburbs of Ajax or Barrie—to elevate its Olympic prospects. But land space is scant.

Toronto has failed in two bids for the Olympics, losing in 1996 to Atlanta, as well as Beijing in 2008. Last year, a Toronto economic development committee rejected the idea of another Olympic bid. Toronto is starting to fall in the world-class city discussion. It's ranked first in the world for safest and most livable city according to an Economist livable cities survey. It was ranked third in North America for transit, and 15th in the world according to Mercer's Quality of Living Report.

The city should bid for the 2024 Olympics only if it won't drown in debt in the process and only if it can figure out a way to get everyone to the doorsteps of venues by a modern rail network. Otherwise, it might be another 115 years before we see a modern day George Orton Olympic winning gold.