As soon as the minute hand completed it’s journey towards the ’12’ of Big Ben, on December 31st 2011, Britain knew it was entering a momentus year. After six years of build-up, we are now only six months away from our hosting of the world’s biggest sporting showcase. We are responsible for the Games of the XXX Olympiad. It is: London 2012.
I give it this excessively fandango’ed introduction because, if we are spending approx. £9.3 billion on delivering The Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer, I’d rather like to enjoy it. Or at least convince myself I’m enjoying it to the value of £9.3 billion.
Having studied sports journalism, I am not your conventional 2012 panner. Indeed, I have purchased three pairs of men’s athletics finals tickets for the Paralympics. (Hi Oscar!) However, you’ll struggle to find many people that can convince that our hosting is worthwhile, at a time where the majority of the UK is still feeling the ill-effects of a tanglibly belt-fastening recession.
The paradox of penny-pinching, while simultaneously justifying this extravegant event is just somewhat grating for many UK residents – particularly those of London and the east London catchment boroughs, that have seen council taxes increase in-line with proposed travel and lifestyle inconveniences.
While I do anticipate that peoples’ attitudes of indifference and deterrence to the Games will alleviate as it draws closer (and the promoting media engulf our conscious with positivity and promises of historical acumen), I do not see many of the Labour government’s long-term ‘legacy’ promises ever really reaching fruition. Certainly never to the extent intended and promised in our winning bid.
A mainstay of our winning bid was for the government to raise the hours of sport in schools to about five-hours per week, and to improve links between schools, local sports clubs and volunteers. We are yet to be anywhere near that quota over the past six years, with most schools still averaging less than two-hours per week, with none of the aforementioned links developed. Therefore, as yet, this proposed ‘sporting revolution’ and legacy for schools (predominantly the overlooked state schools) and at grassroots level, has failed.
While ‘legacy’ has connotations of the past, and of only needing to be judged ‘after the event’, these stats and motions were meant to have been well on their way to being carried out.
Mainly, one presumes, so that when we are in the midst of the Olympics, our youth and next Olympic generation are already in positions where they can access improved sporting venues, equipment and training – and not be waiting, risking disillusionment and indeed undelivered promises.
Worse still for this sporting legacy proposal is that these stats are unlikely to improve in the near future, with the coalition government’s spending cuts to local authorites etc. Indeed, the government has already scrapped an Olympics legacy target of getting two-million people more active by 2013.
This news comes prior to the discovery of the £22 million blow-out of public money on a variety of disorganised and directionless legacy surveys.
Put into context, this is more money than grassroots funding agency Sport England has invested in showcase events, athletics and swimming, since 2009. It also dwarfs 40 of the 46 national governing bodies’ four-year funding packages, which received £480 million in Lottery and Exchequer funds.
And what are the legacy surveys for? To track whether hosting the Games could directly correlate to national governing bodies delivering half of the two-million participants sought by the government (to justify their sporting legacy claims).
Unfortunately, there appears to be a very relaxed policing of these statistics and surveys. Similarly, the credibility – and seemingly reliability – of these surveys was questioned when, laughably, “gardening, walking and ‘active conversation” were included under the umbrella definition of ‘regular sports participation’.
Similarly their overly-specific definition that ‘regular sports participation’ only translates to three or more thirty-minute sessions a week managed to completely discount those that attended ‘only’ two sports sessions a week, no matter how many minutes long.
I am just very annoyed that so much money seems to be being placed into the short-term ‘glory’ of the Games instead of the long-term investment into British sports and youth participation for ‘regular’ residents.
It is a well known fact that most successful Olympians are from private school backgrounds “(50% of British medal winners came from private schools, when the independent sector accounted for only 7% of the total number of pupils).”
So when the justification for hosting the Olympics and Paralympics was that it was an investment into the future generations – not just for sporting success, though this should be a pleasant by-product – but for improved overall national health and wellbeing. So when these promises get flouted, the ‘regular shmuck’ (if you pardon the expression) always feels like the one buying the round in. It is us most tangibly hit by the recession and government spending cuts, our state-school-attending children that are denied adequate sports opportunities and facilities, and us feeling like we have therefore got the worst ratio of ingoing-to-outgoing in relation to what we put in and get out of London 2012.
Is this a rant then? Perhaps. I am just feeling incredibly let down. I was in my final year of Sixth Form when we won the bid – and our school was one applying for a sports scholarship as a result. I’d hate to think those high hopes ultimately became defaulted promises.
In summary: I am angry that the government has failed to reach it’s ‘sporting legacy’ promises to our youths – especially, as always, the already less-advantaged ones. And two, that they are still idly wasting money on ill-advised surveys to push unsubstantiated agendas.
But I am looking forward to spending July mesmerised by sporting prowess. Just so long as I forget how much the privilege is costing us…
Pursuit of Nattiness 