Thank goodness the Olympics are over. I’ve had enough of hearing about them every time I switch on BBC TV or radio, and I know I’m not alone.
Whenever I did catch sight of any event, I was always struck by how poorly attended it was. The only explanations for this can be that tickets in Rio were vastly overpriced or Brazil as a nation had very little interest in most of the sport on offer. Financially, the Olympics will have had no positive impact on the Brazilian economy. Everybody knows it but the fun fascists who run the games daren’t admit it.
Instead, those who work in the Olympics industry are already banging on about Tokyo 2020. Of course they are – it’s how they earn a living.
Yesterday, the Sunday Times produced this table showing how much funding each UK discipline received over the last four years. Some of the numbers are extraordinary: fencing, archery, weightlifting and modern pentathlon received almost £16 million between them over the last four years but failed to land a single medal. Was this money well spent?
Something in the region of £300 million of National Lottery money was ploughed into Britain’s effort. Each athlete cost about £900,000. It’s great for those with a vested interest in the Olympics to be able to boast to the world that Britain came second in the medals table, but think what else that £16 million could have done for overweight inner city school children who can’t swim or don’t get the chance or encouragement to do any sport during the week.
According to today’s Times, Britain’s Olympic “chiefs” have “demanded” every gold medal winner and their key support staff are recognised for their achievements in Rio. They are requesting – as if by right – OBEs, MBEs, knighthoods and the rest.
It’s rather touching that the chiefs feel the athletes need these decorations to feel validated. (Isn’t a gold medal enough?) But it shows how seriously they take themselves – and how seriously they expect the rest of us to take them for electing to spend their time pursuing their hobbies courtesy of National Lottery money – that they now expect further gongs.
Don’t forget, a minority of these gold medal-winning sports stars will end up extremely wealthy thanks to lucrative sponsorship deals which will only be possible because they were able to suck on the teat of the National Lottery in the first place.
The point is this: if the British Olympics bosses are already demanding an honour for every key player, you know they will be lobbying even harder for yet more National Lottery money for 2020.
Truly, winning medals for the British is like heroin addiction: more and more cash will be required to guarantee a bigger hit next time, which means less and less cash may be spent improving the health and fitness of those overweight school children.
