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International dick-waving isn't cheap (see Trident replacement).
It's not like the athletes directly receive this money. There are large programmes (and locations!) that require specialized staff, specialised equipment, etc etc.
And in some sports there are large olympic funnels (eg feeder clubs for British Cycling that pick up novice kids at the age of 5).
Doesn't really seem like much money at all
I'm enjoying pointing out to my Spanish friends that we've got the same number of golds as their position in the medals table, so thank you (British taxpayers) for helping fund this 👍
I’m enjoying pointing out to my Spanish friends that we’ve got the same number of golds as their position in the medals table, so thank you (British taxpayers) for helping fund this 👍
More like Lottery players
More like Lottery players
Anyone else notice how many of the GB athletes thanked “anyone who’s played the National Lottery” in post medal performance interviews? Felt like they’d been specifically told to mention it.
Overall it doesn't seem too bad. There's a few stand out wastes. Shooting for example. A lot of money for little return and it doesn't seem like a 'sport' that is worth encouraging more people to get involved with.
Remember that a lot of the funding is via the Lottery, rather than government/taxation, and it funds the entire sport and talent development, not just the Olympic level.
It get's talked about enough in sports articles, normal news, this place - I'm shocked that you are shocked, tbh
I think it's great. Money well spent.
hardly a surprise - add in some full time staff, equipment, travel, support for this and that , plus supporting some potential medallists and a million soon gets eaten up. The days of successful sport with repeatale results for an annual budget of a few 1000 quid are long gone.
There is a good documentary on iplayer at the moment about the shift post Atlanta and essentially how much each gold medal costs.
What's it called @jam-bo? I'm still fighting off Covid an bored beyond words!
@Tom-B
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000xpm8/gold-rush-our-race-to-olympic-glory-series-1-episode-1
Ooh cheers for that.
I'm genuinely surprised those figures arent higher
Where I live in Germany, there are 8 50 meter pools (most outdoors so only used in summer) the same number of 25 meter pools, probably the same number of athletic tracks, hundreds of km's of cycle paths and an outdoor velodrome and probably more facilities I don't even know about all with a 20km radius. And that is quite typical for the whole country.
So if Germany were to invest in medals the way Britain did, the facilities are there to give those inspired the opportunity too try out sports.
And that has been the disappointing thing in Britains sports funding over the past 20 years, while the funding at the elite level has increased and become focussed on winning medals, it has come at a time when local facilities are being shut down, sold off or gone into neglect, so the opportunity for recreational sports as part of lifestyle has become more difficult. And that is why I think labelling the spend as flag/willy waving is quite fair.
Cost per medal, lowest to highest, in sports where we won stuff.
Sport, total funding, no of medals, cost/medal
Skateboardinng £197,725 1 £197,725
Weightlifting £238,900 1 £238,900
Boxing £12,084,436 6 £2,014,073
Cycling £24,559,306 12 £2,046,609
Swimming £18,731,645 8 £2,341,456
Triathlon £7,049,372 3 £2,349,791
Diving £7,223,280 3 £2,407,760
Equestrian £12,541,195 5 £2,508,239
Taekwondo £8,223,805 3 £2,741,268
Modern pentathl £5,498,321 2 £2,749,161
Athletics £23,007,531 6 £3,834,589
Sailing £22,249,000 5 £4,449,800
Gymnastics £13,408,688 3 £4,469,563
Shooting £6,008,790 1 £6,008,790
Judo £6,564,334 1 £6,564,334
Canoeing £16,344,693 2 £8,172,347
Rowing £24,655,408 2 £12,327,704
Hockey £12,905,612 1 £12,905,612
I would be more interested to see a breakdown of the "cycling" funding to see how MTBing fared.
I would be more interested to see a breakdown of the “cycling” funding to see how MTBing fared.
Badly would be my guess.
I don’t think any of the sports receive huge amounts of money in the grand scheme of things.
Don’t know how accurate this figure is but Man United reportedly cost £650 million to run last year.
Funding levels do baffle me though. Can’t see any benefit to anyone but the athletes from Modern Pentathlon. Not exactly accessible to the public.
It would be worth investigating the MTB bit as Tom Pidcock is a road pro and gets a fair bit of stuff for free ... if he were to do it as a 'Sport GB' employee, so needed to get a physio, mechnic, nutritionist etc. via that route his cost would go up a bunch.
The killer for some sports is that you need to qualify via qualification races, competitions, in differing countries - then the cost adds up.
A lot of money for little return and it doesn’t seem like a ‘sport’ that is worth encouraging more people to get involved with.
Hardly fair considering the cost is pretty much from having a single facility where athletes can shoot pistols with Home Office approval. Then there is the cost of ammunition, targets etc. It might not be your sport but please don't dismiss other people's interests.
The whole cost /medal comes across a bit cost of everything vs value of nothing tbh.
The killer for some sports is that you need to qualify via qualification races, competitions, in differing countries – then the cost adds up.
And Tom Pidcock, despite great results this year, only qualified because someone lower down the World Cup pecking order failed to finish in the top 25 at a race IIRC
If those numbers cover the four year Olympic cycle rather than annual cost, then that looks really cheap to me and worth every penny.
That per medal tally is a little unfair - eg: hockey there's the 15/16 that go to the games (or a performance squad of however many) 'sharing' that £12M to win that one medal. Same with rowing (although they did seem to underperform) - pairs, 4's and 8's, you can also argue for eg: team pursuit vs a single sprinter in cycling.
How many athletes are supported by UK Sport per sport and how many total win medals?
Really surprised that athletics gets less funding than rowing or the cycling. I would have expected it to receive 3 or 4 times as much considering the variety of events covered by athletics and the fact that track and field is the centrepiece of the Olympics.
The breakdown athletics versus rowing would be interesting.. athletics still has a lot of amateur coaches, people outside the 'system', plus if you decide to support a medal potential 8 , that's 8 times a wage etc.
Real question - if you're on GB funding does that count as employment- so Nat ins. etc?
iirc funding is divvied out on the basis of likelihood to return a medal and not whether it’s a centrepiece event/group of events.
Allot of athletics of funded via sponsors certainly for the elite
Let’s face it the Olympics for the past few has been a international peeing up the wall contest funded my poor people’s gambling. I have serious issues with using this money to fund people’s hobbies. We’ve all seen the horrendous behaviour that medal based funding had brought cycling and rowing. The body shaming that goes on in gymnastics. I also hate talent identification programs finding kids that have the physical potential in a sport to gain medals for medals sake rather than developing kids who are passionate about a sport who might not be as good strikes me as a bit Rocky IV.
What from Leeds will lead to more people from a more diverse background mountain biking Leeds Urban bike park or Tom Pidcocks gold. Forget the Olympics and fund grassroots sport and local facilities.
I haven’t checked the figures but looks like Ireland’s rowing investment has paid off in orders of magnitude greater than GB’s. 😉
But apparently the Olympics united 8 billion people 🤣
@Stainypants - how do you feel about the truly obscene amounts of money spent on football and the preening primadonnas who play, encouraging fans to spunk stupid amounts of money on replica team strip, changing designs regularly to maximise the amount they can squeeze from the suckers fans?
I’d be perfectly happy to never hear or see anything about football ever again.
Meanwhile I’ve probably watched more of this Olympics than I have in the past, and enjoyed all of it.
What from Leeds will lead to more people from a more diverse background mountain biking Leeds Urban bike park or Tom Pidcocks gold. Forget the Olympics and fund grassroots sport and local facilities.
We can do both. Big events like the Olympics, and particularly the cycling and skating, gives more validity to these activities and the medal winners have been great ambassadors for the sports.
A couple of random Google results:
https://www.newforestnpa.gov.uk/news/the-national-lottery-community-fund-supports-new-forest-inclusive-cycling-charity/
https://www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk/funding/grants/0030073010
https://www.lifecycleuk.org.uk/article/bike-recycling-project-gets-lottery-funding
Lottery money to elite sport and to grass roots activity
To me it is worth every penny I remember being a kid and watching Olympics and winning next to nothing.
The tide changed big time in 2008 and I don’t ever want it to go backwards.
The trouble is that there's no evidence that elite sport encourages participation.
I guess if we want to spend money to feel good about ourselves then that's ok but it isn't usually presented like that is it.
I know the TdF had a big impact but I would've thought the British success in the Olympics has had a lot to do with the growth in cycling in this country.
If seeing glasses half empty was an Olympic event, we'd be top of the bloody medal table.
Didn't they build a replica BMX track in Telford to train on, that couldn't have been cheap?
Funding goes towards training venues, equipment, coaches, doctors, physios, nutritionists, psychologists, living costs of the athlete who are luckily enough to get it, training camps abroad, and probably a load of other things people don't even think about.
sure I don't agree with the way some of the funding is given out but overall I like watching the Olympics/Paralympics.
@countzero the difference is that football is a business and people have a choice to subscribe to Sky or go to a football game.
The national lottery cash is is effectively a tax on gambling and therefore public money. If lottery money was spend on Harry Kane’s wages then you’d have a point.
24 million pounds for two rowing golds or 12 urban bike parks or dozens of BMX tracks and skate parks. What would make the biggest difference to more people’s lives. I’m glad you enjoyed the Olympics it’s cost the UK a quarter of billion to get those medals a quarter of a billion to ensure that those few are they best at their hobbies in the world.
12 urban bike parks or dozens of BMX tracks and skate parks.
The lottery has been funding things exactly like that. I reckon right now you'd have a very good chance of getting funding if you put in an application. You might even get the council and public on side... thanks to the Olympics and our medal wins
The national lottery cash is is effectively a tax on gambling and therefore public money. If lottery money was spend on Harry Kane’s wages then you’d have a point.
A lot of football clubs have betting companies as sponsors
I missed the bit where you were forced to buy a lottery ticket.
Can’t see any benefit to anyone but the athletes from Modern Pentathlon. Not exactly accessible to the public.
Yeah, and the ‘laser run’ wasn’t anything like as interesting as the name promised. I was hoping for a running man style event.
Hardly fair considering the cost is pretty much from having a single facility where athletes can shoot pistols with Home Office approval. Then there is the cost of ammunition, targets etc. It might not be your sport but please don’t dismiss other people’s interests.
The whole cost /medal comes across a bit cost of everything vs value of nothing tbh.
Not buying that.
As a country we target (no pun intended) funds at Olympic sports for 2 reasons as far as I can fathom. First is for a jingoistic "Aren't we amazeballs" and entertainment lite reason. Gets some stuff on the telly and watercooler moments. Second is to persuade a flabby nation to shuffle around a bit more and be a bit inspired to be a bit more active, reducing NHS bills and making us all lead marginally healthier lives.
Shooting sports fail miserably on both these at the Olympics. It was almost entirely absent from the the BBC coverage so apart from a few die hards prepared to seek it out on an obscure discovery sub channel it will have passed most completely by. It was largely absent because we (the great British public) don't really care about it and also with our medal hopeful not there, there was little to see in terms of chest thumping celebration. But even if the nation had gone gun crazy and taken up the 'sport' in droves after spaffing our load at the thrills of the Olympic visual spectacle it would have made exactly zero difference to our overall health. No one is ever going to be a bit more healthy being a bit more Amber Hill.
What I do agree with is valuing costs per medals is a bit naff. With swimming having 35 medal opportunities and say hockey having 2. Same goes for comparing our famous Olympians medal hauls - Kenny with 8 is incredible but he got 3 shots at a medal for every games. Ainslie just the one. There should be a much broader metric about impact on society at large and take up of amateur sport post games success.