They weren't a boondoggle at all. In fact, from a venues standpoint, they were extraordinarily successful. They used pre-existing venues like the Georgia Dome, Omni, World Congress Center, GT venues, UGa's stadium for soccer, the tennis facility at Stone Mountain, to save money and not leave empty legacy venues like at most other Olympic cities. They built only a small portion of new venues like the Olympic Stadium and the pool at GT, but wisely repurposed them afterword. Then some venues like the velodrome at Stone Mountain and the beach volleyball stadium were temporary and taken down afterword. You would be hard pressed to find any other Olympic host city that did better with venues than Atlanta. Maybe LA, but that's it.