Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad - Euripides.
The Greeks were furious when they did not get the Centenary Olympic Games in 1996. Additionally, the Greek Socialist governments in the years leading up to the 2004 Games struggled to fund the structures required for the event with the workmen still constructing in the month prior to the Games. Of course, certain efforts like the Athens Subway system, kept finding artifacts and stopping for archeologists to preserve the same. Greece has artifacts, who knew!?
With their legendary ouzo time culture, the Athens Olympics had to hire a lot of foreign workers to ‘fill-in’ (expensive!) Finally, being the good Euro-Socialists that they were, the idea of private enterprise and profit being a good thing for helping pay for these events was odious at best. Given the vocal criticism leveled at Atlanta for the rampant sponsorship (Coca-Cola’s home town), Greece gave such efforts a half hearted acceptance at best.
So in place of Atlanta’s US$10 million profit of 1996, the best estimates from outside observers is that Athens (and Greece) are still ‘paying’ the loss of several million Euros or more.
An interesting comparison is how structures are used after the Olympic Torch gutters out. In Atlanta, almost all structures are still in use, although the largest, Centennial Olympic Stadium, was partially demolished to form the current Ted Turner Field of the Atlanta Braves. Much of the other structures went to the various local colleges for their use. The Centennial Park remains a well used park for Atlanta.
Hopefully, the London structures will also become mostly in permanent use as they have been designed for. It is a lesson for the Olympic organizers that the Summer Olympics need to be awarded to large metropolitan areas that can reuse these expensive facilities. Athens was not and is not such a place, their award was for tradition and sympathy but the results are quite logical.
This is at the custom built bicycle racing track/stadium built for the 1984 Olympics and apparently still going strong...