MALLORCA TODAY - Puerto Pollensa support for Olympian Sete Benavides

A large screen has been put up at the yacht club for people in Puerto Pollensa to watch local canoeist Alfonso "Sete" Benavides take part in the Olympic final of the C-1 kayaking this morning. The town hall is to lay on a special bus to take people to the airport to greet Benavides when he returns on Monday.

The Spirit Of 1992: Spain at the Olympics

Great Britain and Northern Ireland's failure to put numbers into the medals table during the first days of the Olympics suggested that the achievements of Beijing might have been exceptional. Then the medals started to flow. Beijing had not been a one-off.

Team GB is meeting the expectations of a nation in much the same way as a previous host nation's athletes fulfilled the hopes of a people. In fact, Spain's achievements in 1992 in Barcelona exceeded these expectations. Spain won 22 medals, 13 of them gold. It was its best ever medal haul. Prior to 1992, Spain had won only five golds at the 15 Olympic Games in which it had participated. Though Spain hasn't performed badly since 1992, it has come nowhere near capturing the same number of golds. And in London, as of yesterday morning, it had managed not a single gold and only three medals in all.

Spain's performance may improve but its hoped-for tally was not helped by Nadal's withdrawal or by the failure of the men's football team to qualify from the first round of matches. The shock of a national side that has won so much in other competitions missing out brought back bad memories - of a team that always underachieved, yet which first showed it could be champions by winning gold in Barcelona, a side blessed by players such as Pep Guardiola. 

But why is Spain doing as poorly as it is? In numerical terms, it has the ninth largest team at the London Olympics. Sheer size doesn't automatically mean success - on this basis, Team GB, which has more athletes than any other nation, should be heading the medals table - but it does help, as it did in 1992 when Spain had the second largest contingent behind the USA.

Expectations of Spanish Olympic success were skewed dramatically by what happened in 1992. In addition to the investment that went in to transforming Barcelona, it was recognised that a nation with little success at previous Olympics had to do something in order to create pride in the athletes as well as in the facilities.

Prior to 1992, there had been no coherent training schemes for Spanish athletes. This was to all change, aided by huge sponsorship co-ordinated through the state television company TVE, which was able to bring in the best coaches from across the world. Though funding was continued and still does through the national Higher Sports Council, Spain's Olympians and their coaches have received only 50 million euros of funding over the past four years; the final calculation for Team GB's efforts in Beijing was put at 235 million pounds of Lottery funding.

Barcelona, though there was real funding for the first time, was a freak. Spain took four sailing golds in 1992, partly because the seas were familiar. Wins, such as that in the decathlon, were simply unexpected. Who now remembers Spain's tennis silver medallist, Jordi Arrese? Home advantage and home crowds and their passion counted for much, and the success in Barcelona is unlikely to ever be repeated, unless perhaps Madrid finally succeeds in its Olympic bid and gets the 2020 Games.

But funding for athletes would have to be totally reconsidered. Team GB is a perfect example of how co-ordinated and consistent funding can pay off. If Madrid is selected for 2020 and if Spain wants once more to rank among the elite of Olympic sports, then this reconsideration should be happening now.

Before the London Games, a group of statisticians, gathered from the Higher Sports Council and the banking, consulting and academic worlds, estimated that Spain would not win more than 19 medals (which would be one more than in Beijing). The athletes will need to go some to meet this. The head of elite development at the HSC has admitted that economic crisis has meant lower funding, and with Spain showing no signs of ridding itself of this crisis, it is difficult to see where the necessary funding would come from. Indeed, it is difficult to know where the funding would come from to stage the Games in Madrid.

It would be simple to say that the 2020 bid should be abandoned. Common sense would suggest that it should be, but common sense can go out the window when presented with the possibility of great events and of the achievements of home athletes. The London Olympics are proving the point.

We should hope that Spain was doing better. By extension to Mallorca, a Spain which achieves at the Olympics raises the profile of sport and therefore to the hope for sports tourism. Spanish Olympic sport needs to rediscover the joy and spirit of 1992, but can it?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Over There: The London Olympics

There was that awful sinking feeling at the closing ceremony for the Beijing Olympics. You might have experienced the same, though you have probably tried your best to forget it. The London bus, the dancers with umbrellas, David Beckham booting a ball. Always David Beckham. Now and for eternity, it would seem.

There was a terrible sense of foreboding, that the London display hinted of a village fete Olympics to come, replete with mad Boris waving a flag. Danny Boyle will, though, presumably serve up more of the millionaire than the Mumbai slum for the opening ceremony. We are about to find out. And personally, I can't wait.

Individual Olympics are etched in the memory, mine at any rate, because of specific performances or where they were watched. 1964: Lynn Davies and Mary Rand leading the world in jumping. 1968: Beamon leaving Davies wondering why he should bother, but also Hemery gold, world record. 1972: coming home from what had been more or less an all-nighter, slumping on the sofa and listening in total shock to a commentary David Coleman could never have expected to have to have given. 1980 and 1984, both political Games but with the glory of Wells, Coe, Ovett, Thompson. Thompson especially, whistling through the national anthem. 1988: in Crete watching Ben Johnson. 1992: in France watching Linford Christie.

Thereafter the Games started to mean less. Like Montreal in 1976, they were mainly a blur, save for Cathy Freeman in Sydney. But 2012 is different. Very different. It is our Games. Ours, but not ours. They're over there, not over here.

I am in the wrong place. I know I'm in the wrong place. I am in the wrong place for being able to experience a cliché; once in a lifetime, though for some the Games aren't once in a lifetime. There are those who were around in 1948 and who have even taken an active part, such as Austin Playfoot, who passed the Olympic flame to my father 64 years ago.

That link is strong enough to give the Games added personal meaning, as also does the location; the Olympic stadium is a mile or so away from my mother's manor in the East End. I know I should be there, but I know why I am not: the rigmarole of applying for tickets. My brother-in-law's brother knew far better than most how to get round it. He applied by post and has a ticket for the men's 100 metres final.

The discussion of the London Olympics here, as in the UK, has revolved around the familiar arguments. Of course the Games are an extravagance, but then humankind is prone to extravagance, unless it happens to live in North Korea, and even there the nutters who run the place indulge in their own bizarre extravagances. Like governments, the British Olympic Association and the International Olympic Committee are guilty of highly dubious extravagances, so are all the rest of us. Extravagance appeals to the inner Ferrari-owner in all of us.

Yet, the discussion which is conducted in Mallorca is, like many other aspects of life in Britain, somehow artificial. It is remote and third-hand. The spend on the Olympics, issues of security, issues of transport, issues of legacy. None of them actually matter. Not when you don't live there. The discussion is artificial also in its focus on the man-made, on the physical manifestations of the Games. It neglects the natural, the personal, the meaning of the Games. And for some, myself included, London has meaning. So, there is a poignancy in not being there, of being only a distant observer of a party which one should be attending.

Great events only come around very occasionally, if at all. For all the naysaying, the Olympics is a great event. Its history is filled with the memorable, some of which, like Munich, would be better for there not being the memory. When Jacques Rogge uttered those words - "that the Games of the 30th Olympiad in 2012 are awarded to the city of London" - there was no feeling of jingoistic pride but instead a breathtaking shiver of shocked connection. A connection with London and with all that the Games, in their best ways, have come to represent and have to offer. And a connection also with the momentous.

So, don't let us down. Don't let there be any dancers with umbrellas. Don't let there be the 257 bus which has taken a wrong turning. But there will be, as there always is, David Beckham. Beckham, the eternal Olympic fame. Oh well, he deserves his moment, as do all the others.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Pau Gasol will carry the flag for Spain at the Olympics

Following the withdrawal of Rafael Nadal from the London Olympics, the honour of carrying the Spanish flag during the opening ceremony has been handed to Pau Gasol, basketball player with the Los Angeles Lakers, and a native of Barcelona.

See more: Ultima Hora

MALLORCA TODAY - Nadal pulls out of the Olympics

Rafael Nadal, who had been due to carry the Spanish flag at the opening ceremony at the London Olympics, has had to pull out of the Games, owing to injury. "The saddest day" of his career, he has said.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

I Will Travel To Rio

There were no parties in Madrid. The samba danced on till the wee smalls in Rio instead. The Olympics. Some years from now. There were presumably a few Brazilians in Mallorca who were dancing the night away as well. Or make that more than a few. The numbers of Brazilians on the island are strangely high given that the great world carve-up of the late fifteenth century denied Spain the largest of South America's countries.

The awarding to Rio of the 2016 games was the fairest result. To have continued to deny South America a piece of Olympic action would have seemed miserly. If South Africa can have the World Cup, then Brazil can have the Olympics, and indeed, given the national team's pre-eminence for so many competitions, it is curious that it has not been granted another World Cup since 1950 whereas an under-performer like Mexico can have had two, albeit that the second was a late change when Colombia fessed up to not being able to stump up the financ and also that Brazil will host the 2014 competition.

Disappointment there may be that Madrid has lost out - again - but it may have been for the best. Now, in all truth, is not the time to be taking on the sort of financial commitment that an Olympics demands. The games may be seven years down the line, but the work starts now, as does the handing around of the cap. The Spanish Government would have been insane to have started chucking money that it doesn't have at a Madrid Olympics. And it might only have fuelled more regional resentment. The Catalans have not exactly been supportive of any Madrid bid, which is a tad churlish as Madrid lent Barcelona its backing in 1992. It might be noted, though, that Juan Antonio Samaranch, who made the emotional plea in favour of Madrid, was born in Barcelona.

But of course, as we keep being told, the Olympics are about more than just a huge tax burden, they are about legacies, promotion of sport and healthy lifestyles and all the usual twaddle. They are also about politics (as in Beijing) and tourism (as in all of them). Though one felt pride at London being chosen for 2012, there must be many now, given the economic circumstances, who would have preferred not having put one over the French or indeed Madrid. Only one city in recent times has truly benefited from the games, and that was Barcelona - all that money that was lavished on bringing it up by the boot- and athletics shoe laces from the sand-pit it had been allowed to become during Franco's time and turning it, once again, into one of Europe's great cities. But there is the pride angle, always assuming the organisers don't completely cock-up and turn a host city into a laughing-stock (Atlanta was never that but it wasn't far short). London Pride, let's hope to God there will be grounds for it and indeed grounds fully developed.

The Olympics are the not the only vehicle for a bit of civic tourism promotion and legacy-building, whatever this latter is. There is the rather more down-scale city of culture malarkey. Palma is up for some of this, as it had been for riding the crest of the wave of the America's Cup before Valencia hoisted its victorious sail. At least no-one's suggested that Palma should have the Olympics - yet. A city of culture, though, seems fair enough. It would make all that cultural tourism stuff seem worthwhile, and who knows, were Palma to be the culture capital - in 2016 by coincidence - maybe all the new tourists that this would create (one hopes) might also contemplate visiting other parts of the island. The actual candidacy is in fact for Palma and the Balearics, which sounds like stretching the city angle a bit. More likely, the tourists who come to those other parts would be shuttled off on excursions to Palma in order to get a bit of cultural action. And action, moreover, that will probably include bands of Brazilians beating drums and dancing sambas, resplendent in yellow and green t-shirts with legends declaring Rio 2016.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Morning Glory", Oasis, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr7MSSPNH9o. Today's title - he was the one with the woolly hat.

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