There was a time when I watched the Olympics with suitable patriotic pride and interest. Then came the baloney of the Sydney bid which I observed at first hand on behalf of businesses desperate to jump on the gravy train, and got an appreciation of the unbelievable snobbery and preciousness that afflicts so much of the ‘Olympic family’, as they are pleased to style themselves. When it takes the person you are going to visit on business 10 minutes to make a cup of coffee in a $200 plunger while he talks about blends and brews and other nonsense, you know you are in the presence of gold medal wankers.
Then of course came the deluge of drug stories and the ugly jingoism that was rampant in Sydney and subsequently, and now I couldn’t give a continental if we win a single medal in Beijing. They could cancel the whole event for all I care. I’ll get much more fun watching the local school athletics carnival.
Maybe I’m in a minority, however, because today we get this story:
The Federal Government has been warned that Australia will slip out of the world’s top five Olympic nations if sports funding is not drastically increased.
The speaker is John Coates, who admittedly is not such a prize Olympic snob as Kevin Gosper but that isn’t saying a lot. My reaction is to ask why anybody would be disappointed if we are not in the top 5 Olympic nations; indeed to be amazed that anyone would expect Australia to be there in the first place. I would have thought that the great Australian inferiority complex which compelled us to be the best in sport cos we have beaches and stuff was well and truly on the wane. All other things being equal, sporting achievements should roughly reflect a nation’s share of the global population and the amount of money it is prepared to devote to coaching and training programs.On that basis Australia should expect to win an occasional medal along with Finland and Iraq unless it wants to spend an entirely disproportionate amount of national wealth on sporting programs … which of course is exactly what has been happening.
But not enough to please the sportocracy. There is never enough for them.
“It is a very big challenge and I don’t expect that there will be more money forthcoming in this week’s Budget for sport, but gee there’s got to be more money sometime not too far into 2009 if we’re going to get good results in 2012.”
If sportspeople had at least to participate in a HECS-type scheme to fund their endless demands on the public purse it might be a good start to reforming the system and justifying more taxpayer support, but any suggestion along those lines is invariably met with howls of outrage. They even protested loudly about a ruling that their winnings should be taxable income. Hints that sporting celebrities are just making a living like anybody else and should be treated accordingly are greeted with gasps of horror. They are representing their nation, don’t you know, and making incredible sacrifices in the process.
Self-serving garbage. They’re like the students who expect special consideration in assessment because they’ve been ‘representing the university’ at some games somewhere, when in fact they’ve been having the time of their lives at a terrific social event subsidised heavily by the student’s union (although not so heavily as when member ship was compulsory).
Coates maintains that ‘the Australian public will not put up with being unsuccessful at the Olympics.’ Well I wonder if that is really the case, especially if the Australian public knew how many hundreds of millions of dollars are devoted to elite sport and what else that money could buy if it was spent on other public services. I’d like to see some proper research rather than rely on John Coates assertion.
I think Coates would be well-advised to STFU and be grateful for what he gets now. Stirring the pot and making vague threats to try to extract even more money from us might prove to be a very counter-productive move.
