Bidding on the Olympics is a tricky business. If you win the right to host the Games, you get your city in front of billions of eyeballs for three weeks (and, by extension, many months prior). You also get the headaches that come with hosting the world's biggest party—the cost overruns and security risks, to say nothing of anger and opposition from locals.
Yet cities continue to pursue Olympic dreams. Virtually every metropolitan area of global stature—Beijing, London, New York, Paris, Tokyo and so on—has sought a Games at one time or another, with varying degrees of success.
