London 2012 has helped to show the true price of Gold

I am mindful that I am about to prick a bubble that has been so magnificently inflated by ‘team’ GB, a bubble which has made us all so proud over the last week, me included. Housebound with a broken leg I would venture that I have watched more Olympic coverage than any other Briton with the exception perhaps of Clare Balding, John Inverdale and Princes William and Harry.

I think it is the BBC gushing interviews that have crystallised my opinion that it isn’t sheer hard work and talent that determines the colour of the medal that is attained but as importantly, it is money also. As I write, I note that China heads up the medal table, followed by the US and ‘Team’ GB, so this is hardly an insightful observation or revelatory conclusion.

But Olympic sports can be crudely demarked along socio economic lines and there has been much made already of our privately educated medallists. There was no Angolan equestrian team for example or Eritrean rowers and perhaps ironically, no sailors from Somalia to worry Big Ben Ainslie. Other sports are more accessible and more meritocratic. There are plenty of African athletes in the sprints and the distance events. Similarly; boxing, judo and weight lifting but even within these events, the concept of professionalism and funding eases the path of the athlete from the wealthy economy towards the podium.

I screamed for Mo Farrah along with everyone else and in his post-race interview I was agog at his pronouncement of running 120 miles per week and being away from his family for six weeks in America, a sacrifice compounded by his heavily pregnant wife. The figure stuck in my mind and I could think of little else. One hundred and twenty miles a week! Twenty miles a day with Sunday off. Who can do such a thing but a professional athlete, someone who is paid to do so? And then I wondered if Mo could have won the same gold medal had he stayed in his native Somalia and I suspect not.

At these games, Somalia has only sent two athletes, neither of whom proceeded beyond the first round of their events. No disgrace in this, but they might be equally gifted as their fellow countryman but were just not afforded similar opportunities.

Similarly, Paula Radcliffe enjoys a great advantage over her more economically challenged competitors. Ahead of her sad announcement that she could not add to the London 2012 medal tally, speaking from her high altitude training camp, our most famous female athlete was at pains to denigrate the drugs cheats who blight her sport. And who could disagree? But her sport is hardly a level playing field.

When a GB athlete is interviewed trackside, with or without a medal, they invariably thank their team and often there are too many people to mention. Physiotherapists, nutritionists, psychologists, agents, administrators, mum and dad obviously, and finally the crowd of course. Not that these people shouldn’t be thanked, of course they should be. But as well as being thanked these people are also being paid. They are not like the Olympic volunteers clad in purple. These people are professionals committed to the cause of their athlete. Who pays them is largely irrelevant. Whether it is the athlete’s sponsors, a healthy breakfast cereal no doubt or the GB tax payer, the point is that the athlete from the Gabon or Sudan probably doesn’t have a team to thank even if the BBC chose to interview the poor chump who had finished flat last.

Taking drugs is cheating, pure and simple. Indisputably, it gives an athlete an unfair advantage over the runner who has relied more fairly on fresh fish and fruit.

But isn’t being able to fly off to a special high altitude training camp for six weeks bestowing an athlete with a considerable advantage? And if not, why do it? And if it equalizes the disadvantage of the rich European who happens to born at sea level against the mountain dwelling Kenyans, how does this sit with athletes from the equally low lying Sri Lankans?

Note that I am offering no solutions here to these supposed anomalies. I have heard it said before that the war on drugs has been lost and we should just accept that chemists are legitimate members of the athlete’s armoury as much as the coach et al. This is not something I agree with. There are many dead cyclists and a very famous US female sprinter who provide ample evidence against.

And nor am I imagining a games that can ever be entirely fair. Life is not fair and so why should anyone expect the Olympics to be. But whilst I have been caught up in the jingoist fervour that is sweeping our unusually united island, I do think it is worth keeping things in perspective when we fete our fellow citizens as being the best in the world.

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• jabulani123

  I usually enjoy reading the Independent blogs, feeling I gain a new insight of some topical discussions.

  But this is just flat-out… pointless.

• cronshaw

  I agree, what a pointless blog.

• http://www.facebook.com/people/Stephen-Porter/1249214006 Stephen Porter

  the truth hurts.

  i imagine the whole nation could excel if we spent enough. many of the rioters who are now in prison probably could have been something special something better.

  one thing i take from this olympics is the realization that to the ioc and society one medal is worth more than a thousand maybe even a hundred thousand lives.

• RACINGINTIME

  The funding for these elitist sports men and women is coming from the lottery. The lottery was meant to fund and develop sports and charaties for everyone not invest £250 million in a few elites who will become instant millionaires if they win gold.

  We should make them pay back the funding plus interst like we do university students seems only fair.

• thomasgoodey

  You haven’t quite explained what the problem is!

• zumbruk

  The logical extension of this argument being that we should handicap everyone so they all come over the finish line simultaneously.

• Laars

  Perhaps when we go back to winning a couple of golds only, we’ll have the usual rant that we don’t spend enough of sports compared to everyone else while not blaming the athletes inadequacies. Now we are spending a lot (a very lot!) and hey ho the athletes are the stars.
  I think DH is right – a bit of balance, please. We are basically buying gold medals and lording it up (inside the UK anyway). Countries which win gold medals for wrestling or weight-lifting are not suddenly respected/admired within the UK in the way we think our golds make us the envy of the world. Within their countries (Iran, Mongolia anyone?) the athletes are equally feted but I’m not sure that Chris Hoy or Jessica Ennis strikes a chord in much of Asia. Or even most of Europe probably. For example, try naming the leader in the men’s decathlon – if Jessica’s event is so significant, how about the men’s equivalent event? Is winning that any less of a global achievement? Ah, but that’s no longer dominated by a Brit so we forget all about it.
  We are rather selective in our views.

• http://www.facebook.com/nbscales Nick B Scales

  The Olympics is a elitist sports contest for the rich, in the elitist city for the rich being funded by a government only interested in the rich.

• http://www.facebook.com/people/Steve-Borg/521826241 Steve Borg

  Gabon should find money for their athletes. They have a high amount of revenue derived from their oil reserves. Not sure that is it our fault that Somalis sent two athletes. They have spent the last thirty years fighting each other…
  Life isn’t fair, but then imagine a short Portuguese or Sicilian running the steeplechase or the long distance races against an Ethiopian or a Kenyan? Impossible since they have the right climatic conditions to run these distances and have a better physionomy. So in some sports non-Europeans were favoured and should have won.