I stumbled across an article today that caught my eye: a city councilor in Toronto, worried about the gigantic cost that hosting an Olympics brings to a city, has suggested that there be a joint bid between Toronto and an American city, such as Buffalo or Detroit.

I have written of this before back at the Courier, but seeing this news item has brought it back to my thoughts: why not? Why can’t and why hasn’t there been a joint Olympics bid, featuring cities relatively near a national border?

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After all, it seems to make perfect sense. For one thing, as councilor Pasternak noted, to have two (or more) cities and two (or more) countries hosting the Olympics would split the costs that the Olympics have financially. The games have become increasingly expensive, often leaving the hosts deeply in debt. It is elementary math that having more hosts would mean the costs for each individual host would be less. In addition, another problem with hosting the Olympics is that, after the games, most of the venues are left empty and in disrepair. Having two hosts, in relative proximity to each other, would lessen this problem. A hypothetical Toronto-Buffalo bid, for example, would be able to utilize plenty of pre-existing facilities, and those that would be built could be placed in a city that could use it more.

For another, it would essentially be the embodiment of the Olympic ideal of brotherhood and friendly competition that transcends national bounds. What would better show that then having an Olympiad that literally transcended national boundaries?

Admittedly, there would be major problems at doing this. For one, technically the IOC requires that only one city and country host. However, this rule has been bent a few times. In 1920’s Antwerp Games, for example, one of the sailing events was held in Dutch waters. In 1956, equestrian events were in Stockholm, since Australia’s quarantine laws at the time made it infeasible to bring the horses to Melbourne. A similar situation happened in 2008, when worries about disease meant that equestrian events were held in Hong Kong (which remains semi-autonomous from the rest of China and competes separately in the Olympics).

Then there would be the political problems. To hold, say, a US-Canada games would cause some to throw fits on both sides of the border. Some American politicians would declare that it was a case of “giving up” half of the Olympics, or that to do so would be Un-American. The Canadians, meanwhile, would probably think it some type of American invasion of their culture. Plenty of other groups would try to tie in their cause to the games, no matter how tenuous.

Border crossing traffic would also be an issue, especially on the Canada-into-USA side of things. While surely some sort of special passports could be made for the athletes, it would probably be more difficult to deal with the large number of press, personnel, tourists and regular border crossers that would come.

There are also some questions of procedure: the rule of the Olympics is that the host country comes in last during the Parade of Nations, has their head of state open the games and automatically qualifies for every event. How would that work with two hosts? Presumably, some things such as the parade and the heads of state could be done simply by doing it together (the USA and Canada could enter at the same time, the US President could pronounce the game open in English while the Canadian Governor-General does so in French, etc.), but the automatic qualifier is tougher. My suggestion: whatever country hosts the finals of that sport gets it, or, alternately, have the two countries play for it.

Of course, not much of this really matters. It’s unlikely that any city, or group of cities, would be willing to go through with this idea, and even less likely that the IOC- infamously inflexible as it is- to allow it.

That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tried, though.