These Former Olympic Venues Were Left To Unceremoniously Decay

The Olympic Games are definitely a spectacle, but the cost of hosting an event the entire world will watch comes at a huge price.

A Swiss athlete introduced a new style of jumping on this tower during the 1956 Winter Olympics The Daschler technique dominated the sport for 40 years. The tower was retired in 1990.

Built for the 1984 Winter Olympics, the Bobsleigh and Luge Track in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina was later used for World Cup competitions. When the Yugoslav wars started in 1991 the venue was turned into an artillery position. All that is left from the 1984 Winter Olympics Olympic Sports Complex in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina is one damaged Olympic symbol. This part of the sports complex even became a real graveyard.

During the 1936 Summer Olympics the Olympic village, in Berlin, Germany housed over 4,000 athletes. Shortly afterwards it was turned into barracks, first for the Germany army, later for Russian officers. Olympic swimming stadium in Berlin, Germany is one of the 1936 Summer Olympics venues that is left to rot after the Soviets withdrew from East Germany. For almost 50 years the swimming pool served as a training facility for the KGB until the fall of communism.

Not so long ago the Hellinikon Baseball Centre, in Athens Greece was a baseball diamond covered with green grass and chairs were vibrant blue, but since the 2004 Summer Olympics the venue has deteriorated into another Greek ruin. Greece spent around $9 billion to build the Olympic venues, including the Athens Olympic Aquatic Centre, in Greece. After the 2004 games the money dried up, but the pool didn’t. In 2004, for the first time in the Games’ history Greece filled the Canoe/Kayak Slalom Centre, in Athens, Greece with walt water, and then abandoned it, just like the other venues of the 2004 Summer Olympics.

The 2008 Summer Olympics were the first to feature BMX racing in the Olympic program in Laoshan BMX Field, in Beijing China, but once the bikes left the venue was left to rot.

The Olympic Aquatics Stadium, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was supposed to evolve into two community swimming centers after the 2016 Summer Olympics. The plan never came to life leaving the pool to slowly decay both inside and out.