The Independent, which used to be a newspaper, says today that each medal gained by Britain at the Olympic Games cost the Lottery and the taxpayer £4,096,500. That’s a lot of money and some have suggested we should divert all these funds to searching for a cure for cancer instead. You could broaden that out, couldn’t you, and divert the money to searching for cures for Parkinsons, dementia, Huntingdons, MS and every single awful disease known to mankind. It’s a valid argument if you don’t believe that sporting excellence is good for the national psyche and inspiring for the next generation who are all, according to the Mail, obese drug addicts. In reality, £4.1 million is not really a huge sum.
Given that we are paying £100 million of taxpayers’ money to kill badgers (lottery funding is not being used, at least not yet, but there’s always time) which will not make a scrap of difference to TB in cattle, perhaps it’s not that much after all. And each flight mission to bomb ISIS in Syria costs about £1 million. Perhaps it’s not so bad to fund world class athletes instead?
But fear not. According to Boris Johnson and the Leave campaigners, we are about to be awash with money with no less than £350 million a week available to the exchequer once we leave the EU. (I should attach a health warning to this claim: it is a filthy black lie, but nonetheless we need to hold Johnson and co to their promises, even if they were only political promises.)
I detest the argument that public money should not be spent on things that are deemed to be unnecessary and of little use to the country. If you were particularly vindictive, you could include all manner of things like old people, traffic lights and lollypop ladies to this list on the grounds that they were all a drain on public finances. This is not a view to which I subscribe, I hasten to add, but where do you draw the line?
Things like sporting success require investment, which means money and sporting success is surely a good thing. I glow with pride when our superstars trounce the opposition at the Olympics and I know that once the tournament is over thousands, maybe millions of people are inspired to take part in sports. My argument is not that we should spend less on sport, but more.
Grassroots sports have been hammered since the Tories came to power in 2010. Local authorities drained off cash now charge huge sums for sports clubs to play, state schools barely teach some sports at all. Investment at this level has shrunk dramatically. I don’t want athletics to be confined to just Mo Farah at the top, I want kids (and grown ups, for that matter) to be participating at the non elite level too.
In any event, the sums invested in top sport are minuscule compared to what governments spend on what we consider to be priorities. Let’s not moan about it: let’s embrace success, build on it and spend more. We’ll be healthier physically and spiritually, too.
