The biggest winner of the Beijing Olympics will be the environmental movement. Odd you say? The environmental movement was the biggest winner at an Olympics where some athletes arrived wearing anti-pollution masks and the world's best marathoner decided to compete in a shorter distance because he was concerned about the pollution aggravating his asthma? Yes. The environmental movement is the biggest winner of the Beijing Olympics.
Major cities actively compete for and covet the opportunity to host the Olympic Games. A host City can expect to gain billions of dollars from advertising, tourism, and infrastructure development. But the City just houses the Games. The real attraction is the athletes that have trained for 4 years to display their immense physical talents on the world stage. Without the athletes and without the athletes performing at their highest level, there is no value to the Olympics.
I expect that following the protests from the athletes about the air quality in Beijing and the extensive media coverage it received, that the IOC (international Olympic Committee) will scrutinize the air quality of any City applying for the Olympic games, creating a massive economic incentive for major cities to protect their air quality. Any bid submitted by a City will need to include an air quality proposal. And since the Olympic bidding and selection process commences 8 years prior to the City hosting the games, the proposals provided will be comprehensive and long term in focus. The City's that are not chosen will have already spent considerable effort documenting and presenting a plan for long term protection of air quality and will therefore most likely still implement the plan. That is to say, it may be politically acceptable to say, 'since we lost the Olympic bid, we will not build the stadium' but it will probably not be politically acceptable to say, 'since we lost the Olympic bid, we will not implement our long term plan for clean air.' Therefore, the pursuit of the Olympic dream for Cities will mean a clean air program for both the residents of the Cities hoping to host the Games as well as Olympic athletes and the casual jogger.