While the British honours system and Sports Personality of the Year have brought the London Olympics orgy to an end, it seems only appropriate to remind you what will happen on 7 January. Don't worry, it's not another awards ceremony, it is far duller than even that.
Submitting official bid books ranks pretty low on the excitement levels created by the Olympics, but this coming Monday is the day for the submission of the bid books for the 2020 Olympics. There will be three bids: Istanbul, Tokyo and Madrid.
Having managed to fail to secure the Games on the last two occasions, Madrid is hoping it will be third time lucky when Jacques Rogge picks the lucky number on 7 September in Buenos Aires. There's fortuitous you might think. Argentine capital, Spanish speaking, Lionel Messi and all that; Madrid must be a banker to get pulled out in September. It might have been before the Argentine president started going around nationalising Repsol's interests, but even this slight hiccup in fraternal Hispanidad relations probably isn't sufficient to scupper Madrid's chances and make all parties look decidedly embarrassed when they pitch up in Buenos Aires for the grand un-opening of the Olympic envelope.
There is a far greater risk to Madrid's bid, and I suspect you all know what it is. Money. The absence thereof. If there is any money, whose is it going to be? Because it won't be Spain's. It will be numbered notes from the IMF or the ECB, and neither of them, one would imagine, would be overly keen to see great wads of cash being thrown at an Olympics, least of all by a country with a well-earned reputation for turning major projects into nice little earners for all manner of politicians and others.
In the scheme of things, the 16 million euros that have apparently been spent thus far do not represent a huge amount, but of this spend, there have been one or two embarrassments, such as the report which, so it has been claimed, ran to a cost of nearly 700,000 euros but which proved to be worthless because one particular bank appeared as the main private-sector partner for the Olympics. Which bank do you think this might have been? If you reckon Bankia, then you have earned yourself a gold medal, one that isn't gold at all but is made out of worthless fool's gold. The mind boggles not only at the fact that someone was daft enough to even involve Bankia but also because of the associations the bank has (political involvement and a spot of alleged malfeasance).
In fact, Madrid's application document was pretty impressive. But then, producing a report detailing the application is one of the easier parts of the process. It was littered with the usual guff about what the Games would bring as well as all the stuff necessary to deal with accommodation, press, security and so on. However, other aspects of the preliminaries haven't been quite so impressive. The Games logo was unveiled to general bafflement and criticism. It looks like five flip-flops was one quip. One of the promotional videos (pura pasión) has been slated for the fact that it features flamenco, which isn't representative of Madrid, and people sitting around at cafés doing very little.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't quibble with Madrid's ambitions for the Games. But circumstances aren't normal. Were Madrid to be pulled out on 7 September, one can but only imagine the reaction of a shocked world that the capital of a country in such dire financial straits could be. It is no argument to suggest that the economy might be in better shape in seven years time, as commitments would have to start this year, were Madrid to win. And some of those commitments would come from the city of Madrid itself, already cash-strapped and in debt.
It wouldn't only be the infrastructure that would need funding, there would be the athletes as well. Spain would not have been as successful as it was at the 1992 Games had it not been for special funding. Its performances before Barcelona were poor and they have not come to close to matching those of 1992 since. The Spanish Olympic Committee just doesn't have the money. So where would this come from?
Monday marks only a further step along the way. The IOC evaluation commission will visit the candidate cities in March, report some time after, and the cities will brief IOC members in June. And on 7 September, the decision will be announced. Madrid? Well, part of me hopes that it succeeds. But it is a part that most certainly isn't my head.
QUIZ: "Libra, and my name is Charles. Now I like a woman that's quiet." It was of course The Floaters and it was truly awful. "Twenty Twenty". This was the 15th studio album by which American group?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Showing posts with label Madrid bid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Madrid bid. Show all posts
Thursday, January 03, 2013
Monday, August 06, 2012
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
