THE WASHINGTON POST: Can you simultaneously love and loathe the Olympics? Absolutely

It’s lovely here. It really is. There’s a tendency, when the Olympics are more than halfway over and your surroundings morph from being novel to mundane, to bury your head in the competition and the work.

Advice to self: Look around. The view on the walk from the finish area to the press room at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre is muddy if you stare at your feet, stunning if you raise your head to the Dolomites stretched out all around.

The competition, too. With nearly a week to go, the Milan Cortina Olympics have already exposed humanity and strength, frailty and courage, intrigue and interest.

What will the next four years bring for Ilia Malinin, now a Quad (demi)God? What will Wednesday’s slalom bring for Mikaela Shiffrin, without a medal here or four years ago?

Will Canada and the United States meet for hockey gold - twice? Will speed skater Jordan Stolz set two more Olympic records to go with the two he already has?

And those are purely American themes. Mamma mia, the host Italians have more golds and more medals than anyone but the Norwegians. (This is another column, but … the Norwegians! They’re like the Duke or Kentucky of the Winter Games - a perennial 1 seed. Except Duke and Kentucky aren’t ranked 121st in the world by population. Alt for Norge, indeed.)

At every Olympics, the athletes rise. They have risen already here. They will rise the rest of the way.

So why do I have this pang in my stomach, like this shouldn’t really be happening?

“The Olympics are wracked by a set of ingrained problems such as overspending, displacement, gentrification, intensified policing, greenwashing, and corruption,” Jules Boykoff, a political science professor at Pacific University, wrote in an email Monday, “factors that make the Games unsustainable in the long term.”

Right. That’s why.

Mr Boykoff is an expert in this stuff. A former elite soccer player, he has written extensively on sports and politics, with the Olympics in his crosshairs.

Not recklessly. Reasonably. Among his books: 2024’s “What Are the Olympics For?”

This isn’t to throw a drenched blanket onto the flame of these Games when there are so many compelling competitions still to come. It’s to be realistic about the idea that the Olympics - and not just those staged here - have issues.

When the torches are dimmed in Italy on Sunday night, it will be Los Angeles’s turn. Those Summer Games of 2028 may seem a long way off. They’re not.

Let this serve as a flare into the sky saying: Be vigilant. Watch what actions the organisers of those Olympics - not to mention this administration - take as LA 2028 approaches.

Back to the existential stuff: I’ll admit, I’m torn. Coming to the Olympics is an honour. Telling the stories of these athletes is a privilege.

There’s not a time when an anthem plays, or a home athlete celebrates, or someone cries - or whatever - when the hair on the back of the neck doesn’t rise. That’s real. That’s what we’re here for.

But enveloping ourselves in those athletic emotions - letting the NBC-ness of it wash over you at the exclusion of everything else - is also irresponsible.

What I’ve learned after covering 12 of these things: You can love the Olympics, and you can loathe the Olympics. They’re hardly mutually exclusive.

What’s important: The Olympic “movement” can’t be allowed to just run amok.

Think about the thinking that phrase tries to force on people: A movement implies a swelling of people and thought and emotion - a cause - that takes on a life of its own.

In the case of the Olympics, it’s a cloak to make the Games - for a specific host city, but also as a phenomenon over time - feel inevitable.

As Mr Boykoff has written about, assigning host cities involves arm-twisting and greed and often kickbacks. It has never been an aboveboard process.

The fact that the next Games are in Los Angeles should only serve as a reminder that they were originally “awarded” - if that’s still the right phrase - to Boston as the US candidate for 2024.

The people there said, accurately, “Hey, nobody asked us!” The revolt worked, so we now have LA in 2028.

“Democracy be damned,” Mr Boykoff wrote. “At a time of rising authoritarianism worldwide, including in the United States, this matters beyond the sphere of sport.

“The people who tend not to benefit from the Olympics, and even get hurt by them sometimes, tend to be those who are not allowed into the conversation. Again, the Olympics’ democracy deficit is real.”

Which, with Los Angeles afoot, is important to remember.

Previous host cities - and not just those in China and Russia - have gone to great lengths to mask low-income housing, to sweep aside the less fortunate, to present the best - but not a realistic - version of themselves.

Given that the 2028 Games will be staged under an administration that has already shown a willingness to deploy federal troops in cities that neither need nor want them, and given that the administration values image and perception above reality, we should consume the run-up to those Olympics - and their actual execution - with caution.

There’s also the issue of excess. These Games brought a new sliding track in this resort town. They brought a new hockey arena on the outskirts of Milan.

The International Olympic Committee - with $7.6 billion in revenue for the four-year period from 2021 to 2024 - likes to talk about leaving a small footprint, both environmentally and structurally. Ask Rio de Janeiro and South Korea how that went.

Now, it ain’t all bad. These Olympics will cost an estimated 5.7 billion to 5.9 billion Euros - or $6.8 billion to $7 billion - according to a report published by S&P Global Ratings.

The bulk of that money comes from the central Italian government. The report concludes that the fact the Games are spread out - from Milan as a hub but with other venues strewn throughout the mountains - helps lessen the financial strain on any one region. “We view the cost of the games as reasonably limited,” S&P said.

That’s a start. It’s not enough. Any Olympics has an environmental impact, an economic impact, a human rights impact. All must be monitored. All must be scrutinised.

There are so many medals left to win. Cherish the experience of watching the athletes earn them. That’s the spine-tingling part. But after the anthem and the tears, take a breath.

There’s a cost to putting on this show, and the shows to come. And it’s fair to celebrate the participants and simultaneously ask, “Is all this worth it?”

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