In my opinion, it's rational (which surprises me that it would be "populist" since populist thinking is rarely rational).
The Olympics really are a terrible waste of effort and resources for the host nation, and the host nation rarely, if ever, gets a positive return on it. Mostly, it seems only to serve to increase the prestige of some head-of-state, nothing more. In reality, it costs an enormous amount of money to build facilities that are only used once and then go to waste. The world would be better off designating two separate, permanent Olympics facilities, one for summer and one for winter, and just reusing those every 4 years.
Then what exactly is the goal? If you're not better off after doing something than before doing something, then why would you do it? Hosting the Olympics doesn't help a host nation in any measurable way that I've ever seen, though it does seem to increase the profits and prestige for some national leaders, the IOC, and of course other companies that stand to profit from the event as another poster here pointed out. I don't see how that helps the people of the nation at all.
Extraordinary public funding that goes through a narrow "takings" funnel may be a high price to pay for the "not always profits" outcome of an Olympics though.
To give examples, Calgary recently voted not[1] to host the Winter Olympic Games when they had been previously known for doing quite well in 1988. [2] When I was in high school we had a substitute teacher from Greece to talked about how he was unhappy with the economic effects on small towns from larger infrastructure projects after the 2004 summer games.
I wish we would quit moving it around. The Olympics could be quite profitable if countries didn't spend a fortune building for it.
If we held it in Athens (not sure if Olympia could support it?) for the summer, then have it rotate between countries that can host without massive infrastructure changes for the winter (NA - Calgary/Lake Placid, Europe - St. Moritz, Oslo Asia - Beijing, Pyeongchang).
