What Do the Winter Games Do To Ski Resorts?

Winter Games

If you’ve been exploring the possibility of taking a family vacation – or even a private vacation – at one of the world’s most renowned ski resorts, you might have noticed some of the different characteristics these top resorts have in common. Many are situated in well-known mountain ranges like the Alps or the Rockies, or at least situated on some of the top local peaks in their respective areas.

Something you might have also come across is that many of these ski resorts have served, in the past, as hosts for the Olympic Winter Games. What does this mean? Well, for one, we don’t want to get into a chicken-and-the-egg debate about whether or not it was the games that made the resort, or the resort that brought the games. Still, no doubts linger about the quality of these elite snow slopes, especially if they have been deemed worthy in the past of hosting some of the best winter athletes on the planet.

So what do the winter games do to ski resorts? Let’s take a look.

First, we know that the Olympic committees in charge of decided where games will be held hold different cities to different standards. A look at how Beijing cleaned itself up in preparation for the 2008 Summer Games gives you a glimpse into these standards, showing how the Olympics can have a truly dramatic effect on the local economy of the site that an Olympics is held at.

But the Winter Olympics are a bit of a different beast – they are frequently held in lesser-known cities that otherwise wouldn’t get a chance to see the Olympics. Examples like Salt Lake City in Utah serve to illustrate this point. This allows small towns, like Cortino, Italy, to experience the Olympics without having to be a major metropolis that is considered a world-class city.

What happens when the Olympics rolls into town? Well, for one, resorts might be overhauled so that the international brigades that pour into the city are impressed with the local atmosphere. Money is thrown around, infrastructure is improved, and slopes and hills are cut in the fashion of Olympic-quality hills. Although not all of these changes will stick, the Olympic atmosphere does indeed a bit of itself behind.

If you’re asking yourself whether a resort in a town that once held the Olympics is really all that special, you should definitely answer in the affirmative. After all, think of all of the sites that haven’t been able to experience the Olympics, and give one of the resorts that has, a solid try.

Photo Credits: kevindooley

Originally posted 2009-06-30 05:33:09.

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