Every two years, cities around the world make bids to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to host the Olympic Games. Originally, a host city was selected simply based on its strength of being a popular place for certain sports. Today, a city is selected through a much more scrupulous process.
Any city that wants to host the Olympic Games puts in its name to the IOC and is considered an "Applicant City. "For the next ten months, the IOC investigates the city on several points:
First, the city must prove that it is big enough to handle the Olympics. With the games come a huge number of tourists, athletes and journalists. The city must show that it can host the games in new stadiums, accommodate all the people in hotels and transport everyone from one place to another with a reliable mass transit system. Second, the city needs to convince its residents that the expenses of hosting the Olympics are worthwhile. Finally, the city needs to maintain a highly positive media exposure to carry the games.
If the lOC decides that a city has fulfilled the three points above, the city is considered a "Candidate City" and goes into the second stage of the process. Each "Candidate City" has to submit(递交) an application and an application fee. After that, the IOC makes a final judgment on which city is the best candidate for the coming Olympic Games.
The application fee is incredibly high. This fee is meant to discourage cities that are not committed to the efforts necessary for hosting the Olympics. But once selected, the host city generally needs to spend even more on construction projects, including an "Olympic village," new stadiums and transportation systems.
But if the Olympics are so expensive, why do cities want to host the games? There are a variety of reasons—the eagerness to be in the international spotlight for two weeks, the opportunity to bring new jobs and to build up tourism to the city, to name but a few.
