So, is £17m for each gold REALLY worth it? The hard truth is that with so much funding Team GB fell short, writes JEFF POWELL… at least the England football team pays for its miserable failures | HO
The rather un-British orgy of self-congratulation has abated. The adoration by the luvvies, bless ’em, has subsided. Our civil servants have torn themselves away from the telly to resume working from home for at least an hour and a half a day.
It is time to count the cost. Such as £17.55million for each beribboned gold, if you divide the £245.8m Government and lottery funding for Team GB at the Paris Olympics by the 14 medals struck in the only metal which matters in the table of national glory at the Games.
Even if you finagle the figures to include the silvers and bronzes which make up the rest of the British haul of 65 medals, it comes in at £3.78m a pop. But in reality that disguises the dark depths of expensive failure in the City of Light.
Not least the 14 sports, no less, which failed to return a medal of any colour for their portion of the hefty investment in their questionable talents.
The most wasteful extravagance was the £13.69m lavished for no reward whatsoever on — wait for it — hockey. Oh, how jolly. And no matter how persuasive their plummy Whitehall lobbyists must have been hitherto, this is one of the sports now expecting a drop in its booty.
Josh Kerr (centre) finished second despite beating his great rival Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the men’s 1500m
The most wasteful extravagance was the £13.69m lavished for no reward whatsoever on hockey
Lewis Richardson picked up the only medal of Team GB’s boxing efforts marking a huge collapse in a sport that has previously yielded plenty of gold dust
British boxing’s collapse in Paris after years of medal stockpiling — down to a solitary and rather fortunate bronze for Lewis Richardson to show for its £12.08m hand-out — has put Rob McCracken, long-serving head coach to so many champions, under a cruel spotlight.
Jade Jones was shocked in the taekwondo round of 16
Sailing, for so long an Olympic forte for this sea-faring nation, spent £22.8m on no less but no more than Ellie Aldridge’s golden kite. And who knew anything about that piece of equipment a month ago? Expect fewer hands on deck in Los Angeles four years hence.
Bryony Page soaring to victory on the trampoline was the only golden glint from the £13.44m spent on gymnastics.
On the gold-only exchange, cycling lavished £29.31m on Tom Piddock’s bumpy ride aboard his mountain bike and the women’s team sprinters on the track. But for Emma Finucane adding a couple of minor gongs to her share in the latter, the velodrome which was a pantheon to British glories in Olympics past would have been a catastrophe. What went so wrong? Well, their Medicine Man did leave under a shadow of scrutiny.
Now bate your breath for the mind-boggling scale of investment on two haute-Olympic disciplines which managed only one GB gold apiece: athletics £22.76m. Swimming £18.92m.
Many a highfalutin word has been uttered by officials about the ‘wonderful breadth of endeavour and achievement’ which racked up an assortment of silvers and bronzes. Thus they hope to cover up the fewest golds since Athens 20 years ago.
In reality all the additional spending since Tokyo three years ago has produced virtually the same medal tally as the preceding two summer Olympics.
Cleverly, the British Olympic Association (BOA) set their target for Paris at 50 to 70 medals. They might as well have said anything between one and 100. And still they would have fallen short of their other declared requirement of placing among the top five in the medal table. Only golds come into that calculation, so Team GB wound up seventh behind the USA, China, Japan, Australia, France and the Netherlands.
Sailing had traditionally been another safe bet for gold medals for Team GB – but they walked away with just the one from Paris
Emma Finucane came away from Paris with three medals – the women’s team sprint was the only gold medal to come from the velodrome
Tom Pidcock’s mountain biking triumph was the only other gold to come from Team GB’s cyclists
Only one gold came from the pool and one on the track – with Keely Hodgkinson’s the only top-of-the-podium finish at the Stade De France
At least BOA chairman Andy Anson had the honesty to admit the need for an investigation into the scarcity of gold.
Time, also, to remind the authorities of Billy Bremner — the late, great, gritty Scotland and Leeds United footballer — entitling his autobiography You Get Nowt For Being Second.
Katharine Johnson-Thompson had led the heptathlon before slipping to second
When it comes to Brits at the Games, finishing second or third comes with being lauded to the Olympian heavens, along with fame and fortune. Even the eye-watering figures mentioned here do not tell the full extent of the Government’s financial backing for sport. A recent bonus of £70m was spread around 1,110 athletes. I’ll do the maths. That is £63,000 a head.
Three hundred and twenty-seven of them made it to Paris with women (172) outnumbering men (155) for the first time. The majority never mounted a podium but still received much back-slapping and autograph hunting. They were glad-handed with excuses, too,
The cheerleaders now masquerading as commentators on our airwaves moved on from eulogising England’s dire efforts at the Euros to highlighting the tiniest of interruptions to the schedules of the unsuccessful by Covid three years ago, niggling injuries back in 2023 and the emotional trauma of losing an aged grandparent any time since the Tokyo Games. It took American sprint legend Michael Johnson to put Britain’s losers into balance and context on the BBC, as politely as he could.
Of course there were moments of exhilaration. Not least Keely Hodgkinson’s mane-flowing supremacy over 800 metres and Alex Yee’s golden feat of endurance in the triathlon. Also tear-jerking poignancy for Andy Murray’s limping swansong at Roland Garros and Tom Daley’s farewell dive with a silver lining.
But please, don’t call any of them heroes. Not for having all expenses paid for playing the games they love, then attending the biggest party in town. The real heroes are out on our streets tackling knife-wielding maniacs, arresting rioting thugs and thwarting terrorists.
Andy Murray’s limping farewell to tennis was one of the Games’ great moments
Alex Yee (centre) provided one of the summer’s most exhilarating moments when he won triathlon gold
Our hordes of fans, by the way, deserve a medal for their unwavering volume of support as flop after flop lumbered by.
As for the Games at large, Paris was pretty, its glorious monuments a vivid postcard to the next generation of tourists heading for the most visited city in the world. There were wondrous personal triumphs, too.
To the ecstasy of France, their own Leon Marchand surfaced from the pool as the new, garlanded Michael Phelps. A Netherlands lady of a certain age, Sifan Hassan, not satisfied with picking up bronze medals in the 5,000m and 10,000m, just kept running to win the marathon in Olympic record time. It is tempting to imagine her jogging on home across the Dutch border.
Paris was messy, too. No one could have planned for it raining on their opening parade along the river but that weird ceremony was tainted by a sacrilegious lampooning of the Last Supper and barely saved by Celine Dion’s haunting song in defiance of her illness.
Long-distance swimmers caught ‘Seine sickness’ in those polluted waters, at least one of them critically. Two boxers reported by their own sport to be bulging with male hormones, but scandalously untested by the IOC, crushed all-comers en route to women’s gold medals.
Through it all, rarely if ever has British jingoism come at such an exorbitant price. At least the England football team pays for its own miserable failure to win so much as a teapot since that summer of ’66.
Leon Marchand – the newly garlanded Michael Phelps, emerged from the Games as France’s new hero
The Netherlands’ athletics superstar Sifan Hassan picked up medals in three different events
Yes, more running tracks, playing fields, gymnasiums and equipment are good for the nation’s health. But at a time when thousands of families are having to rely on food banks and soup kitchens to feed their children, our Olympic chiefs are left facing a serious question.
Shouldn’t all the grants they receive be laser-focused on athletes with a realistic chance of winning gold rather than squandering millions on those simply indulging in the traditional ‘taking part’ spirit of the Olympics while enjoying all the fun and Games?
