It is an old idea, but its time has now come. To wit: designate a permanent location for the summer and winter Olympics.

A permanent venue for the Summer Olympics? Athens—the site of the original Olympics and the first post 9/11 games in 2004—should not be controversial. Greece is virtually a neutral nation so far as current politics is concerned. The Winter Olympics may be more debatable; however, Austria and Canada could make legitimate claims.

But the basic objective—ending the every-four-year hegira from one country to another, with the attendant corruption in the bidding process and establishing a permanent venue for the Summer Olympics—should make the London Olympics in 2012 the last of these peripatetic exercises. Individual states can still sponsor the quadrennial Olympics in Athens, but would be limited to funding maintenance upgrades, expanding the Olympic Village, enhancing security, and conducting opening/ closing ceremonies.

We have just completed the most extravagant and lavishly appointed Olympics ever held. Beijing set new marks for wretched excess (records for vast overexpenditure are exceeded with each successive Olympics), so let us kowtow one last time in the direction of this solid gold Lamborghini of an Olympics and return the event to something on the level of a modest Cadillac.

We have been aware, at least from the 1936 Berlin Olympics, that the event is as political as it is athletic—if not more so. Hitler's Germany had its points of power to project. The Cold War cost the world the Moscow Olympics in 1980 following the Soviet Afghanistan invasion and the general western boycott of these games. And in its tit-for-tat riposte, the Soviets and their allies shunned the 1984 Olympic games in Los Angeles. There was politicized nonattendance at the Beijing games, and the prospect of Russian control of the Sochi winter games for 2014—with Georgia virtually next door—is already raising ulcers.

Repeatedly, the games have been depicted as national "coming outs" or exploited as patriotic exercises re U.S. games in LA and Atlanta featuring endless "USA/USA" chants; Moscow; Seoul; Sydney; and now Beijing. The construction expenses engendered, frequently for "one off" structures, have been mindnumbingly absurd with either massive state expenditures or commercial advertising that leaves the question whether the competitors are athletes or commercial products. The concept of an amateur athlete has virtually evaporated and sportsmanship as an ideal is close behind. The International Olympics Committee has been left in the pathetic position of rationalizing the failure of the host state to live up to the arrangements implicitly promised when awarded the games.

The Beijing Olympics illustrate the distorting effect of politics. Advocates of awarding the games to China argued that they would "open" China to global influence, increase human rights and liberties for Chinese citizens, and encourage Chinese leadership toward adopting democratic practices. It was a gamble—and the "good guys" lost.

The costs for staging the games were incalculable but estimated at $40 billion—and often it was the poorer citizens who suffered, either through inadequately compensated expropriation of property or by funds spent on glitz/glitter that should have been directed to rural health care, environmental protection, and social services. The atmosphere permeating the games was as controlled as a 21st century high-tech dictatorship could make it. Internet access was restricted. Special areas were designated for protest; permits were required to protest—but (oh so clever) none was granted and those requesting permits frequently were arrested. Wildcat protests were quickly dispersed and/or participants arrested and deported.

We need to appreciate that great powers will do whatever they deem necessary to have the media atmospherics they desire from the games. But it is time to end our complicity in their self-aggrandizing manipulation.

At the same time, it would be appropriate to eliminate the various junk sports that have infiltrated the games. This process is already under way with, for example, the termination of U.S.-style baseball, but should be accelerated. Is women's beach volley ball more than a tryout for the Playboy centerfold? Indeed, any competition not precisely measured by the faster, further, higher rule, but rather by impressionist judgments by sometimes biased judges should be re-evaluated. Synchronized swimming? Equestrian events (should the horse get the medal)?

Even team gymnastics generates debate over the real age of the little girls competing that is as compelling as their acrobatics. We all have our choices for activities that are more artistic/cultural than sportive. Perhaps an international "vote them off the island" approach would indicate what streamlined games should include.

The Olympics, like a supertanker, won't spin on a dime, but it is time to turn the rudder.

David Jones is a former political counsellor who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa from 1992-96.