Didn’t we do well in Rio to win 67 medals? For a while at least we can put the Brexit blues behind us and bask in the glory that these dedicated athletes have brought to our country. I naturally made most of the best excuse I have had in a while to celebrate with a glass or two of the Indian wine.
But then in the cold light of the following morning I found myself pondering on some of the wider aspects related to the games and Team GB. Why for example were there no Asians amongst the medal winners – or come to think of it in the team as whole?
Does the 950 thousand pounds per medal won represent good value for money? Does it matter that team GB was made up of elite athletes who were hand picked soon after the 2012 games and then given access to the best facilities and top coaches available
The first question is probably easy to answer. Sport as a career is not something Asian parents generally invest in. There are exceptions of course but they are few and far in between I once asked Graham Tailor, the former Watford FC (and England) manager when we could expect an Asian – specifically Indian or Pakistani – player in the first team squad His response was - when Asian parents accepted a professional sports person was just as worthy a profession as a doctor, lawyer or engineer, few would disagree with him.
The second question is more difficult to address. On first thought using Lottery money to fund Team GB is better than raiding the government purse But then, when you consider that the money is targeted at a privileged few picked from a small pool the justification begins to wear a little thin. After all, the majority of lottery ticket buyers come from the low income groups. It is unlikely the potential Olympic squad members will come from this group. That is because participation in sport has been gradually eroded and is under constant attack. This is a direct result of government cuts which force local councils to sell off playing fields and reduce access to leisure facilities to ordinary people.
And it is precisely because this scheme is so selective and restrictive that I think our system of building Olympic squads needs to change Sport should be available and affordable to all, the money from the National Lottery should be more evenly spread between would be Olympians and the rest of the community.
If just a fraction, say 20 percent or so of the 65 million spend on the small Olympic Squad this year could be diverted to School and Community sport provision, we could have a bigger pool of potential gold medal winners to pick from and even if not, the result would be a much healthier nation. Just think how much the National Lottery could save the nation on reduced health care bills.
Oh and there is one other thing, these Gold (and indeed silver and bronze) medal winners who stand to earn thousands if not millions from sponsorship deals should be required to pay back some of the money we all paid to help them get them get to the top.
We make students pay back when they earn a certain level, so why not Olympic Medal Winners?
