Fair Games IELTS Reading Answers

Fair Games Reading Answers is a passage that appeared in IELTS Academic Reading exam. With diligent practice of this passage, you can ensure that your Reading skills are up to the mark and the reading module can be the top-scoring category for you. So, understand how to approach and answer the different question types in the reading module to achieve a top score.

The question types found in Fair Games Reading Answers are:

• IELTS Reading Matching Sentence Endings (Q. 14-18)
• IELTS Reading True/False/Not Given (Q. 19-25)
• IELTS Reading Multiple-Choice Questions (Q. 26-27)

Practice the reading passage, Fair Games below and for more, try IELTS reading practice tests. But, before you take the test, learn some tips from this video to get that perfect IELTS reading score!

Fair Games IELTS Reading Passage

Fair Games?

For seventeen days every four years the world is briefly arrested by the captivating, dizzying spectacle of athleticism, ambition, pride and celebration on display at the Summer Olympic Games. After the last weary spectators and competitors have returned home, however, host cities are often left awash in high debts and costly infrastructure maintenance. The staggering expenses involved in a successful Olympic bid are often assumed to be easily mitigated by tourist revenues and an increase in local employment, but more often than not host cities are short changed and their taxpayers for generations to come are left settling the debt.

Olympic extravagances begin with the application process. Bidding alone will set most cities back about $20 million, and while officially bidding only takes two years (for cities that make the shortlist), most cities can expect to exhaust a decade working on their bid from the moment it is initiated to the announcement of voting results from International Olympic Committee members. Aside from the financial costs of the bid alone, the process ties up real estate in prized urban locations until the outcome is known. This can cost local economies millions of dollars of lost revenue from private developers who could have made use of the land, and can also mean that particular urban quarters lose their vitality due to the vacant lots. All of this can be for nothing if a bidding city does not appease the whims of IOC members – private connections and opinions on government conduct often hold sway (Chicago’s 2012 bid is thought to have been undercut by tensions over U.S. foreign policy).

Bidding costs do not compare, however, to the exorbitant bills that come with hosting the Olympic Games themselves. As is typical with large-scale, one-off projects, budgeting for the Olympics is a notoriously formidable task. Los Angelinos have only recently finished paying off their budget-breaking 1984 Olympics; Montreal is still in debt for its 1976 Games (to add insult to injury, Canada is the only host country to have failed to win a single gold medal during its own Olympics). The tradition of runaway expenses has persisted in recent years. London Olympics managers have admitted that their 2012 costs may increase ten times over their initial projections, leaving tax payers 20 billion pounds in the red.

Hosting the Olympics is often understood to be an excellent way to update a city’s sporting infrastructure. The extensive demands of Olympic sports include aquatic complexes, equestrian circuits, shooting ranges, beach volleyball courts, and, of course, an 80,000 seat athletic stadium. Yet these demands are typically only necessary to accommodate a brief influx of athletes from around the world. Despite the enthusiasm many populations initially have for the development of world-class sporting complexes in their home towns, these complexes typically fall into disuse after the Olympic fervour has waned. Even Australia, home to one of the world’s most sportive populations, has left its taxpayers footing a $32 million-a-year bill for the maintenance of vacant facilities.

Another major concern is that when civic infrastructure developments are undertaken in preparation for hosting the Olympics, these benefits accrue to a single metropolitan centre (with the exception of some outlying areas that may get some revamped sports facilities). In countries with an expansive land mass, this means vast swathes of the population miss out entirely. Furthermore, since the International Olympic Committee favours prosperous “global” centres (the United Kingdom was told, after three failed bids from its provincial cities, that only London stood any real chance at winning), the improvement of public transport, roads and communication links tends to concentrate in places already well-equipped with world-class infrastructures. Perpetually by-passing minor cities create a cycle of disenfranchisement: these cities never get an injection of capital, they fail to become first-rate candidates, and they are constantly passed over in favour of more secure choices.

Finally, there is no guarantee that the Olympics will be a popular success. The “feel good” factor that most proponents of Olympic bids extol (and that was no doubt driving the 90 to 100 per cent approval rates of Parisians and Londoners for their cities’ respective 2012 bids) can be an elusive phenomenon, and one that is tied to that nation’s standing on the medal tables. This ephemeral thrill cannot compare to the years of disruptive construction projects and security fears that go into preparing for an Olympic Games, nor the decades of debt repayment that follow (Greece’s preparation for Athens 2004 famously deterred tourists from visiting the country due to widespread unease about congestion and disruption).

There are feasible alternatives to the bloat, extravagance and wasteful spending that comes with a modern Olympic Games. One option is to designate a permanent host city that would be re-designed or built from scratch especially for the task. Another is to extend the duration of the Olympics so that it becomes a festival of several months. Local businesses would enjoy the extra spending and congestion would ease substantially as competitors and spectators come and go according to their specific interests. Neither the “Olympic City” nor the extended length options really get to the heart of the issue, however. Stripping away ritual and decorum in favour of concentrating on athletic rivalry would be preferable.

Failing that, the Olympics could simply be scrapped altogether. International competition could still be maintained through world championships in each discipline. Most of these events are already held on non-Olympic years anyway – the International Association of Athletics Federations, for example, has run a biennial World Athletics Championship since 1983 after members decided that using the Olympics for their championship was no longer sufficient. Events of this nature keep world-class competition alive without requiring Olympic-sized expenses.

Fair Games IELTS Reading Questions

Question 1-5

1. Bids to become a host city
2. Personal relationship and Political tensions
3. Cost estimates for the Olympic Games
4. Purpose- Built sporting venues
5. Urban developments associated with the Olympics

A. often help smaller cities to develop basic infrastructure
B. tend to occur in areas where they are least needed.
C. Require profitable companies to be out of business
D. Are often never used once the Game is over
E. Can take up to ten years to complete
F. Also satisfy the needs of local citizens for first-rate sports facilities
G. Is usually only successful when it is from a capital city
H. Are closely related to how people feel emotionally about the Olympics
I. Are known for being very inaccurate
J. Often underlie the decisions of International Olympic Committee members.
K. Are holding back efforts to reform the Olympics.

Question 6-12:

6. Residents of host cities have little use for the full range of Olympics facilities.

7. Australians have still not paid for the construction of Olympics sports facilities.

8. People far beyond the host city can expect to benefit from improved infrastructure.

9. It is difficult for small cities to win an Olympic bid.

10. When a city makes an Olympic bid, a majority of its citizens usually want it to win.

11. Whether or not people enjoy hosting the Olympics in their city depends on how athletes from their country perform in Olympics events.

12. Fewer people than normal visited Greece during the run-up to the Athens Olympics.

Question 13 and 14:

A. The Olympics should be canceled in favor of individual competitions for Each sport
B. The Olympics should focus on ceremony rather than competition.
C. The Olympics should be held in the same city every time.
D. The Olympics should be held over a month rather than seventeen days.
E. The Olympics should be made smaller by getting rid of unnecessary and unpopular sports.

Fair Games Reading Answers with Location and Keywords

Let’s now review the answers to the questions from the passage in the reading section, Fair Games Reading Answers, and assess your improvement for a high IELTS Reading band score.

Tips to Solve the Question Types in Fair Games IELTS Reading Answers

Let us check out some quick IELTS Exam Preparation Tips for Band Score of 8+ to answer the three types of questions in the Reading Answers of Fair Games.

Matching Sentence Endings:

IELTS Reading Matching Sentence Endings questions come with two lists – a list of incomplete sentences and another one of possible sentence endings. You will have to match them on the basis of the information provided in the passage. Some tips to answer the questions and obtain a high band in the IELTS exam are given below:

• The answers will be in the same order as the list of incomplete sentences.
• Use the elimination process to get the correct answer.
• Don’t read the complete text until you have studied the incomplete sentences and the endings.
• Only read the relevant sentences.
• You will have to match meanings and not the exact words. Thus, look for paraphrasing and words.
• You must ensure that the grammatical structure of two halves of the sentence is matching correctly.

True/False/Not Given

In the IELTS Reading True/False/Not Given questions are all based on facts. Several factual statements will be provided to you, and it is up to you to determine whether or not they are accurate by reading the text.

To answer this type of question, you can use the following strategies:

• Read the question and identify the keywords – Before reading the material, have a look at your list of True, False, and Not Given questions.
• Scan the passage for synonyms or paraphrased words of the keywords – When you have highlighted the keywords, swiftly read the text to look for paraphrases or synonyms.
• Match the highlighted words in the questions with their synonyms in the text – Once you find both sets of keywords, cross-check them to find the answer.
• Identify the answer – If the facts match, the answer is TRUE, and in case it doesn’t match, it is FALSE. If you are unable to find the answer or unsure of it, mark it NOT GIVEN.

Multiple-Choice Questions:

You will be given a reading passage followed by several questions based on the information in the paragraph in IELTS Reading Multiple-Choice Questions. Your task is to understand the question and compare it to the paragraph in order to select the best solution from the available possibilities. Check out some IELTS Reading tips to increase reading speed to answer the questions:

• Before reading the passage, read the question and select the keywords. Check the keyword possibilities if the question statement is short on information.
• Then, using the keywords, read the passage to find the relevant information.
• To select the correct option, carefully read the relevant words and match them with each option.
• You will find several options with keywords that do not correspond to the information.
• Try opting for the elimination method mostly.
• Find the best option by matching the meaning rather than just the keywords.

Mastering passages like “Fair Games” can significantly boost your Reading IELTS band score. Regular practice with real exam-style questions not only improves speed and accuracy but also builds your confidence. Keep exploring different IELTS Reading passages and refine your techniques to ensure success on test day.

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