As Paris suits up for the Olympics, John Inverdale asks if it’s time we stopped to think about the vast expense incurred in the pursuit of medals
So here’s your starter for ten. How many of Great Britain’s 22 gold medallists in the Tokyo Olympics can you name? And for your bonus, how many of the other 42 medallists trip readily off the tongue?
Adam Peaty. Obvs.
And while you’re thinking, here’s something else to ponder on. The budget for Team GB across the four years leading up to those Games was £342 million.
Max Whitlock.
It’s very easy to get caught up in an Olympic and Paralympic frenzy once every four years. London 2012 remains an indelible memory for a sizeable chunk of this country’s population, mostly for how it made us feel as human beings rather than for the gold rush and the rowers who cried but who’s names you’ve forgotten.
Tom Daley.
But there are bigger issues at play here. Societal ones. Our society – where more than a quarter of the population are categorised as obese, and in some parts of the country that number rises to 40 per cent. An education system in which the number of PE teachers has dropped by more than 10 per cent in a decade.
In short, a world where every medallist who stands on a podium declaring their extraordinary feats will “inspire the nation” is indoctrinated and deluded. Many of those who already play sport will undoubtedly be fired up to greater feats later in life. Most people will say “well done” and head to KFC.
Jason Kenny. Keep going.
And as the world heads to Paris with its fingers, toes and every other moveable body part crossed, hoping the Games will pass off without some unimaginable incident, there’s also the question of the cost and the relevance.
Once upon a time, the Olympics were the only show in town when it came to bringing the world together for a sporting celebration. These days we are all united 24/7 via our TVs, phones and watches. From the NBA to the IPL, we are global sporting junkies all.
Back then, the knowledge that it was an ‘Olympic year’ was a sporting topic of debate for months in anticipation. Now, it comes after the Euros and is mercifully squeezed in just before the Premier League resumes. It’ll get zillions of clicks on TikTok and Instagram, but will have faded into the history books as soon as Liverpool win their first match under Arne Slot.
Lauren Price.
So do the Olympics matter any more? Tokyo’s bill for staging the Covid-affected Games in 2021 was more than £10 billion. What else could that money have been spent on? France is anticipating a cost roughly half that amount, but 45,000 police will be on duty for the opening ceremony alone.
If you’re thinking of planning a robbery on the Champs-Elysées, that’s the night to do it. It’s big, it’s bloated, and across the board it just costs too much. And for what?
A world where every medallist who stands on a podium declaring their extraordinary feats will “inspire the nation” is indoctrinated and deluded.
The mountain biker. Give me a sec…
To go to Athens last summer, less than 20 years after the Olympics took place there, was a profoundly depressing experience.
Kelly Holmes. You all remember that.
Venues that had lit up the world now lie abandoned. The IOC had a golden opportunity to take so much of the cost and the chicanery out of the Olympic movement by making Athens the Games’ permanent home, but a lack of vision and an avalanche of individual ego meant that proposal never got off the ground.
And here we are now, with Brisbane as the host for 2032 because nobody else wanted it. Sound familiar? Is the Olympics heading down the road of the Commonwealth Games?
Have to hurry you.
Once every four years, you’d watch the Games and wonder where Vanuatu was. Now, courtesy of Google, you probably know that Bislama is the official language there.
Back then, you’d know every British medallist, never mind those who won gold, because there weren’t that many, and they all made us very happy. Now there are so many, their value is intrinsically diminished.
In the most ludicrously simplistic terms, £342 million pays for 2,000 PE teachers across four years – 2,000 PE teachers to instil exercise and nutritional common sense into the next generation of Burger King loyalty card holders.
Billions of euros could be spent on improving the housing situation in some of the most dreadful banlieues in the north of Paris, rather than allowing President Macron to showboat by swimming down the Seine. And so it goes…
But as someone who’s had the thrill and the privilege of attending 10 Olympic Games, do I really believe all the above? I honestly don’t know. But it’s dishonest not to have the conversation. The Olympics ‘just happen’ every four years because they always have. That doesn’t mean they always should.
And the real starter for 10 in this most impossible of University Challenge conundrums, in a world beset by so many bigger and more profound issues, is: “Where should elite sport sit in the budgeting requirements of a nation?”
Now don’t all rush to answer that one. And look up the list of medallists, by the way. After all, it’s what you do with everything else.
John Inverdale is our tennis Ambassador and a broadcaster for ITV and the BBC.
