The Olympics is starting to loom large on the horizon, the first Olympics in the post-GFC world, where the cashed up London that won the bid to host the games in 2012 is a far cry from the one that will host the Games.
Starting with the Atlanta games in 1996, the Olympics have become a “better than the Joneses” competition, culminating with the amazing, no expense spared, Beijing games.
However, the global financial crisis has people the world over counting the pennies for everything, and there is growing concern in the UK that the Olympics are going to be an enormous financial disaster.
Australia’s hands are somewhat bloody in all of this. Sydney 2000 was a grand announcement of Australia’s presence in the modern world, with much fanfare and spectacle, and was crowned “the Greatest Olympics ever”.
The reality was that Australian borrowed up big, and on the back of the income generated, covered the cost. There is nothing wrong with this; in fact it’s very smart.
The problem was that the Sydney games out-did the Atlanta games by so much, and was so impressive that a standard was set on how much the games should “get better” with each Olympiad.
Greece is still reeling from the Olympics’ “homecoming” in 2004, and the Chinese budget for 2008 was infinite. With so much National pride now attached to the Olympics, how can London be seen to be a step down from Beijing, Athens or even Sydney?
The debate is already starting with regards how the Olympics can be “improved” for the future, ensuring its survival and place in the landscape for evermore. However there is something important that needs to be remembered. There are only two sporting events that bring the whole world together; the Football World Cup and the Olympics, and they couldn’t be more different.
Football is the single most commonly played game in the world, and the World Cup is a two year process involving more countries than the UN to determine the very best. It is a celebration of the world’s focus on a single goal.
The Olympics on the other hand, is a different animal all together. It is a celebration of diversity and competition, with a range of events that embrace this ethos. The appeal of the Olympics is the package nature of the event. People are exposed to new and exotic events on top of the staple “blue ribbon” events.
As we look at ways to make the Olympics more “sustainable” for the future, we need to remember what it is that makes it great.
Hacking away events that are deemed to be “too small” or “too obscure” actually hacks away from the Olympic spirit. At the end of the day, all gold medals are equal, and it takes just as much drive and commitment to win the Men’s 100m sprint gold as it does to win the Women’s Fencing gold. This is the essence of what makes the Olympics great.
In most cases – but not all – the Olympics is the pinnacle of a sport, to win gold is the highest point that you can reach.
The biggest area that the Olympics can improve is by assessing the role that it plays in the calendar of each Olympic sport.
Boxing is a great example of where the Olympics have a massive role to play in the sport. Olympic boxing is an amateur sport, and seen as a real honour to win the gold, particularly given the way that professional boxing is structured nowadays. Perhaps a structure like this could be appealing to a sport such as tennis.
Another option would be to negotiate with the governing bodies of sports (such as basketball, baseball and hockey) to combine the World Championships and Olympic Games into a single event. This would require a lot of give and take on both sides, but could have far reaching rewards.
An area that FIFA have been quite keen on in recent times has been the legacy that a World Cup leaves. The USA, Japan/Korea and South African world cups have all been about leaving infrastructure and motivational legacies for the future. Unfortunately this is one are that the Olympics cannot compete. The Olympics is more than the some of its parts, facilities will (and do) struggle to meet ongoing maintenance costs in the way that rectangular football stadia can.
The future of the bidding process should consider this issue more closely, identifying locations where the infrastructure exists, inviting those countries to consider bidding. The appeal is that it would only require minor upgrades to host the games, as opposed to the full scale industrial expenditure that seems to be the norm.
We need to keep focused on what it is that makes the Olympics great, and one of only two sporting events that can unite the whole world.
It is about more than just a handful of blue ribbon events, and we should be looking for ways to tweak what we currently have, not to make wholesale changes.
Dan Winters
Guest
The thing about the olympics is that they are getting bigger and more expensive because the revenue received from TV deals and sponsorship is ever-increasing. It is actually a sustainable trend, believe it or not! Let me explain - I mean just NBC alone (excluding other broadcasters around the world, which also pay big bucks for TV rights) are estimated to pay US $ 1 billion for TV rights to London 2012. For Rio this may be around US $1.5 - 2. Then theres dozens of other broadcasters around the world who pay huge amounts of money to screen olympic coverage. Also the olympics are a truly global event - 205 countries competed at Beijing 2008! The model that is NOT sustainable is the Commonweath Games! The money received from TV and sponsorship for the CWG is no where near what you get for the olympics, yet the CWG are an event that is ever more requiring bigger venues and more compact bids from host cities, yet there is no major increase in TV deals, sponsorship to match this! The CWG is an event that is attended by 71 countries (BUT note, this figure of 71 teams is a figure that is boosted by the fact that Great Britain competes as 6 DIFERENT nations - England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey and Australia send a different team to represent the Norfolk Islands).
Hoy
Roar Guru
I personally don't think there is much to like about Olympic boxing that is for sure. How many boxers have been cruelled and ripped off by judging at the olympics?
Aaron G
Guest
I don't know Pedro, there is no simple solution for the Olympics to move forward. The Olympics doesn't seem to be relevant to the modern sporting arena, for instance who considers swimming or athletics for their viewing on television outside of the Olympics? My thoughts as per my initial statement is that there is no easy solution, the suggestion I can make to the IOC is that they put more effort into promoting the qualifying aspects of their event, because quite frankly who remembers who qualified and who didn't? Unlike the World Cup in which quite a few people did remember but given the minute nature of the events hosted by the Olympics whether summer or winter who will notice? But the IOC needs to realise that if that they do not rectify this the Olympics may proceed to a slow painful death of uninterest
mintox
Guest
By including too many sports and disciplines in the Olympics it can dilute the product as results and events become increasingly meaningless. FIFA were very careful about increasing the number of teams at its World Cup in case they diluted the quality of what was on show. It was only in the face of huge demand that the numbers of teams were increased to 32 to allow other teams to be added to the elite group (and some would argue that it hasn't been as much of a spectacle as it once was because of this). The Olympics could do with some streamlining and yes some sports should be cut and this is not a new thing. Most recently Baseball and Softball were cut from the games so this is not a new thing. For a sport to be part of the Games, it should be one of the pinnacles of the game, popular and certainly should be relevant sports that people can and will get involved in. In the case of sports such as Synchronised Swimming, Synchronised Diving, Walking, BMX and Trampolining, there are huge questions about their relevance and popularity. Penthathlon and Heptathlon are disciplines that seem irrelevant in modern day athletics as their are less quality all round athletes since they now specialise in individual events. Tennis at the Olympics sits a long way down the order of importance in it's sport and due to its structure, means that a lot of the best players in the world can't compete. You say "don't hack at the soul of the Olympics", I think it's too late!