The broken down bobsled track at Mount Trebević.
Ioanna Sakellaraki / Barcroft Im / Barcroft Media via Getty Images
The 2024 Summer Olympics are underway in Paris.
Sometimes cities successfully repurpose parts of their Olympic set-ups, like in Montreal.
But oftentimes, these giant investments are torn down or abandoned, as these photos show.
It can be an expensive and potentially damaging undertaking for a country to host the Olympics. This year’s games in Paris are costing just $10 billion, according to CNBC. While that’s nothing to scoff at, it’s a mere fraction of the $55 billion Brazil reportedly spent in 2016.
A huge part of the expense is building new facilities for the sports and housing for the athletes. Then, after the closing ceremonies, some stadiums get used again — there’s always going to be a market for a soccer stadium — but other venues like Olympic pools, kayaking facilities, ski jumping, and beach volleyball can fall into disrepair almost immediately.
These Olympic venues from Berlin, Sarajevo, Athens, Sochi, Rio de Janeiro, and Beijing have all seen better days — take a look at what they looked like once the crowds left.
James Grebey contributed to a previous version of this article.
In Berlin, Germany, there are still remnants of the 1936 Games, almost 90 years later.
A set of Olympic rings in an abandoned former swim hall at the site of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Village.
Maja Hitij/Getty Images
This building, pictured in May 2021, used to be a swimming hall.
Some of the Olympic Village still stands, almost untouched.
The original abandoned houses for athletes marked with their housing complex names stand at the site of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Village.
Maja Hitij/Getty Images
Getty Images reported in 2021 that a German developer was renovating some of the structures — and building new ones — to create residences at a section of the Olympic Village in Berlin.
The 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, took place less than a decade before the Bosnian War.
The medal podium at the ski-jump venue.
Ioanna Sakellaraki / Barcroft Im / Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Yugoslavia has now been split into Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia.
The city was under siege, and though it’s largely recovered in the years since it ended, many Olympic sites, like this ski jump, have been left to the elements.
The ski jump.
Dado Ruvic/Reuters
Sarajevo itself falls within Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The bobsled course on Mount Trebević is overgrown and covered in graffiti.
The broken down bobsled track at Mount Trebević.
Ioanna Sakellaraki / Barcroft Im / Barcroft Media via Getty Images
However, the city repaired the cable car, which ferried people to the bobsled events on the mountain, and it reopened in 2018, making it a tourist destination once again.
“In the past few years … the mountain has slowly returned to something like its former self,” The Guardian wrote in 2018. “Hotels, restaurants and cafes have been rebuilt, mines swept away and hikers from all over Sarajevo visit en masse.”
Occasionally, it gets used by brave BMX bikers.
Bikers have used the abandoned tracks to practice.
Dado Ruvic/Reuters
Despite some rejuvenation to parts of the area, the bobsled track remains abandoned and covered in graffiti, and moss grows along its walls.
Athens went billions over its planned budget of $1.6 billion for the 2004 Summer Olympics.
An empty scoreboard at an Athens former Olympic venue.
Yorgos Karahalis/Reuters
The Greek government had to pay for everything, and, sadly, there just wasn’t any use for most of the buildings, stadiums, and courses after the Olympics, Time reported eight years later.
A decade later, photos showed a crumbling pool full of fetid water.
The pool has been filled with sitting water for years.
Yorgos Karahalis/Reuters
The pool, pictured in 2014, is crumbling.
These huge, abandoned investments must have been especially painful in light of Greece’s financial crisis.
A practice pool at the Aquatic Center in Athens was drained.
Yorgos Karahalis/Reuters
The financial crisis led to bailouts for the country starting in 2010.
Understandably, its money wasn’t going toward renovating abandoned buildings.
A view of derelict buildings at the Helliniko Olympic complex shows the damage.
Milos Bicanski/Getty Images
“Welcome home” says the sign, a reference to Greece being the original site of the Olympics.
A decade after the crowds left, nobody was playing baseball or softball at the stadium in Athens.
The softball stadium in Athens.
Reuters/Yorgos Karahalis
A worker told the London Evening Standard in 2012 that it’s not technically abandoned, it’s just that nobody ever plays softball.
The baseball stadium was used to house refugees in 2016, CNN reported.
The beach volleyball court in Athens was consumed by weeds.
The beach volleyball center where weeds have grown through the sand.
Reuters/Yorgos Karahalis
The stadium was completely empty — apart from the weeds — when it was photographed in 2014.
The Beijing National Stadium, built for the 2008 Summer Olympics, often has trouble finding events that can fill its 80,000 seats.
The stadium in Beijing.
REUTERS/David Gray
However, it was used again at the 2022 Olympics and became the first stadium to host the Summer, Winter, and Paralympic opening ceremonies.
The kayaking facility also hasn’t gotten much use.
The signs are rusted over.
REUTERS/David Gray
The rowing facility is largely ignored.
There are barricades on the ground and rusted ramps.
REUTERS/David Gray
As the 2022 Olympics were in the winter, much of the specially built summer equipment wasn’t used.
Many venues, like the beach volleyball court, are simply closed to the public.
The sign says that the volleyball courts are closed.
Reuters/David Gray
Climbing on the fence is not advised.
Half of the Beijing National Aquatics Center was eventually remodeled and turned into a water park.
The pool at the Beijing National Aquatics Center.
REUTERS/David Gray
Here’s an abandoned Beibei, one of the Olympic mascots of Beijing, pictured in 2018.
Beibe was one of five mascots for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images
The 2014 Winter Olympics were held in Russia’s largest resort city, Sochi.
A view of Sochi.
Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
It was the most expensive Olympics in history, costing the Russian government $55 billion, according to AP.
The Fisht Stadium was originally a dome, but it was converted to an open-air stadium for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Fisht Stadium started off as a dome, but now has no ceiling.
Artur Lebedev/AP Images
Sochi was just one of many cities to host games during the World Cup.
But the rest of the structures have barely been touched, like these ski jumps in Estosadok.
A view of the ski jumps from the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Friedemann Kohler/picture alliance via Getty Images
There’s not a person to be seen.
The Summer Olympics were held in Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 2016. In the eight years since, venues like this aquatics stadium have become a ghost town.
The aquatics center in Rio has seen better days.
Buda Mendes/Getty Images
Maracanã Stadium was renovated for the Olympics, but it has largely been abandoned.
This is Maracanã Stadium from above.
Mario Lobao/AP
The Copa América finals in 2021 were held there, though almost no spectators were allowed due to the pandemic.
Vandals stole seats and TVs from the stadium.
Anything that wasn’t nailed down — and some things that were — were up for grabs.
AP/Mario Lobao
Some of it has since been restored.
Parts of the Olympic complex became a health hazard after destruction, like the Rio Media Center.
The Rio Media Center is now twisted metal.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
It’s seen here in November 2016.
The site remained untouched for months.
It was filled with trash.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Six months after the closing ceremony, trash from the Games was still visible.
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