The Olympic Games - both the summer and winter varieties - continue to boggle the mind. These exercises in national virility become ever more absurd, yet no-one dares to question whether we can stop the juggernaut and do something else.
The Winter Olympics in and around Vancouver have now ended and the Canadians can get down to the task of sorting out how they will pay for the event. They have only just finished paying for the 1976 summer Olympics in Montreal and I suspect that they will need a year or two to pay for this latest jamboree. I have tried to find out what were the estimated and the actual costs for the whole event. So far I have failed. During 2009, the auditor general for British Columbia was trying to do the same and failed. If he can't find out, the rest of us haven't much chance. Even a year ago John Doyle [the auditor general] was ready to throw in the towel and give up. The official estimate 3 years ago was about $1.6 billion - sounds like plenty you might think - but, as is usual with these types of estimate, no one is quite sure what was and what was not included. So what did they actually cost and who is paying for it? No one seems to know. One estimate says $6 billion +. The organisers have pumped out all the usual clap-trap about the legacy and the benefits for the future - ignoring the fact that all the evidence shows that in 100% of cases there are no benefits - just debts. One newspaper in Vancouver is suggesting that they will be paying for these games for decades to come. And so will Ontario and Quebec and .......... all of whom threw millions of dollars into the project. Then there was the spending on athletes to try to ensure that Canada did at least win some medals at their own games. I suppose that later this year somebody will have come up with some sort of estimate of what are the true costs. But, then it will be too late.
Our own event for 2012 will be a similar exercise in obfuscatory accounting. It already is. The total cost is now said to be £9.5 billion. It has been at this figure for some time now having risen rather rapidly from the original £2.6 billion. The current figure is obviously wrong and from now on all the parties involved will have to concentrate their efforts on ensuring that any more extra costs are somehow kept off balance sheet. My estimate is that the games will actually cost between £15 billion and £20 billion - surely an absurd amount of money. Minority sports that will cost £1 billion for each day of the games!!!!!!!!!! Periodically, they wheel out Sebastian Coe to tell us what a wondrous thing these Olympic Games will be and what a marvellous legacy they will leave behind. He has become rich from these Olympic Games but otherwise he is clearly mad.
The latest piece of nonsense is the revelation that all the people of London who have paid £250 per household for this extravaganza will not be able to actual watch any of the main events. About 80% of all the tickets in the main stadium will be allocated to officials and corporate sponsors and buying one of the remaining 20% will cost at least £1,000 per ticket. You should be able to get in to see synchronized drowning at 8.00 am in the pool and you may even be able to watch the cyclists in the velodrome, but the 100 metres final - forget it.
I am looking forward to the traffic chaos and the jam-ups caused by the priority routes scheme for athletes, officials and hangers-on. And the blaming and the search for scapegoats and ..........
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