Faster, Higher — Cheaper? Paris’s Budget Effort to Reboot the Olympics

(This story was originally published on July 12. Today, the Olympic Games open in Paris.)

Peter Ueberroth never won an Olympic medal. He failed to make the cut for the US water polo team for the 1956 Games. And yet he has secured a place in the record books as the architect of the modern Olympics. Ueberroth was the organizer of the 1984 Games in Los Angeles — the first and only Olympics to make a profit. So when he telephoned Sebastian Coe in 2005 offering advice to the recently appointed head of the London 2012 organizing committee, the former Olympic runner listened.