Apparently people aren't excited about the upcoming 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. Despite spending $15 billion, nobody is buying tickets.
Could there be an obvious reason though? Well, it does feel like we JUST finished the previous Olympics. By February, hardly a year and a half will have passed by. But that doesn't necessarily mean failure... the Salt Lake games were very successful, despite even less time having passed since the events in Sydney. But maybe the problem isn't time. Maybe it's space... you know, distance. Around 8000 miles separated Sydney and Salt Lake City. The distance between Athens and Turin? A little over 900.
The last time we had two Olympics spaced so closely together was 1992, when Barcelona held the Summer Olympics, and Albertville, France hosted the Winter Olympics, around 350 miles away. The Albertville Olympics? I don't remember them either.
Don't worry though. Journalists get paid every two years to write basically the same story: Upcoming Olympics in Trouble. Terrorists were going to wreak havoc in Salt Lake. Athens couldn't even build the venues. They're going to have to GIVE away the tickets! And then the Olympics come around, and the stands are packed, and everybody has a pretty good time. I'm sure Torino 2006 is going to be just fine.