The 2014 Sochi Winter Games cost more than all previous Winter Olympics combined, which raises the question: what's going to happen to all that expensive Olympic infrastructure after the games have gone? For cities that host Olympic Games, converting their stadiums and Olympic Villages into useable space is a challenging task; some places succeed, others fail, letting once vibrant structures fall into disuse. In Sarajevo, however, former Olympic structures tell more than a forgotten event. Riddled with bullet holes and covered with graffiti, the Sarajevo Olympic structures tell a tale of terrible conflict.
Less than a decade after the former Yugoslavia became the first Communist country to host the Winter Olympics (in 1984), bloody conflict from 1992-95 tore the country apart. During the Siege of Sarajevo, the longest seige of a capital city in modern warfare, fighters on both sides took to the mountains surrounding the city, using the Olympic structures as battlements and storage for their fighting and weapons. The bobsled track became an artillery stronghold for Bosnian-Serbs—some defensive holes, drilled by troops, can still be seen in the track's concrete walls. The ski jumps—also sites of heavy fighting—remain unused. In the mountains, buried land mines still pose risk for those who walk their inclines.
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