Rio de Janerio 2016: Olympics, investment, controversy and gold medals

Hi guys, given that I'm sure many of you like me have caught the Olympics fever, I'm going to do a piece discussing the pros and cons of the Olympics. I had the opportunity to watch the Olympics up close in person four years ago when it came to London and I ended up spending over £3000 in tickets for the gymnastics event (I am only interested in gymnastics and no other sports) for a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch it on my doorstep. Well, sure enough I am watching the 2016 Rio Olympics on my laptop from my roof garden (with plenty of homemade ice cream and snacks no less) and I am definitely not going to Tokyo in 2020. My friend who did go to Rio to watch the Olympics has spent an obscene amount of money given how everything is so much more expensive during the Olympics there.

At the 2012 Olympics with Singaporean Olympian Lim Heem Wei.

One of the controversies about the Olympics is about money - firstly, the host nation Brazil isn't a particularly rich country and yet they've decided to spend millions on hosting the 2016 Olympics when that money could have been spent on the millions of poor people who live in abject poverty in Brazil. Given how expensive the tickets are at the Olympics, it is really only an event that the rich in Brazil can enjoy. As for the poor people, well, they can at best watch it on their TVs and at worst, vital funds that could have been spent on healthcare or education in their communities has been spent building new sporting facilities for the Olympics. You can see why this Olympics has been very controversial. Does Rio need another sports complex or should that money be spent on the Favelas - the slums on the outskirts, where millions live in dire conditions? Will the poorer, working class residents of Rio have the chance of use these splendid sports facilities once the 2016 Olympics are over? What kind of legacy will the 2016 Olympics have?

After the 2012 Olympics, I am very skeptical about this talk of an Olympic legacy - very little changed in London after the 2012 Olympics. A sport that team GB excelled in at the 2012 Olympics was cycling - but the impressive Velodrome used for the Olympics is severely underused and is at best a good training facility for our national team. Ordinary cyclists like myself who get around London by cycling are still fighting hard to get our local government to build more cycle lanes on the busy roads around London just so we can cycle more safely. Overall, there was virtually no increase in the participation of sports after the Olympics. Those who already loved sports got excited but those who were not interested simply very not converted even with the Olympics on their doorstep. You thus have a choice: do you provide sporting facilities for the masses knowing that you will not see any tangible results by investing in recreational sports - or do you give that same amount of money to a very, very small handful of extremely talented athletes who could possibly then go on to win your country a gold medal at the next Olympics? Should you invest in sports for the masses, hoping that a much bigger number will reap the benefits of participating in sports, even if it is at a very low, recreational level? It is a rather tough choice if funds are limited - especially in times of recession and austerity. Should elite sports be something pursued only by rich kids whose parents can afford it, or should your national team be selected on the basis of merit and talent? Can the stories of Olympic glories of a few athletes inspire a much larger number of people?

The 2012 Olympic Velodrome = a big white elephant?

But looking at the bigger picture of sports - the competitors that we see at the Olympics are the very best in their field and nations who can afford to invest heavily in sports usually do a lot better than the poorer ones. There has been much controversy in Singapore about the PRC-imports who have represented Singapore in table tennis and have won Olympic medals for Singapore. But Singapore is hardly the only country who have resorted to doing this - the oil-rich country of Azerbaijan have built a gymnastics programme out of thin air by buying up gymnasts from countries like Russia and Ukraine. Their star at the Rio 2016 Olympics Oleg Stepko actually represented Ukraine at the last Olympics in London. However, as training conditions in Ukraine are poor and sports in general are very poorly funded in Ukraine, Stepko moved to Azerbaijan where he has far better training conditions and doesn't need to worry about paying the bills. And who can blame him for that? That is why I was rooting for another Ukrainian gymnast, Oleg Verniaiev - the one man who can challenge defending Olympic champion and 6-times world champion Kohei Uchimura of Japan. After all, Uchimura is a huge star in Japan and has the best training facilities and coaches in the world in Japan whilst the Ukrainian team face huge uncertainty in terms of their future funding. Furthermore, many of the best coaches in Ukraine end up moving abroad to coach in richer countries - and can you blame them?

So really, the Olympics doesn't present a level playing field then, it clearly favours richer countries like Japan and America over poorer countries like Ukraine. To produce Olympics champions, you need money - you need a whole lot of money to fund athletes to train full time for many years, so they don't give up sports and get a full time job to pay the bills. You need to give them the best facilities and coaching to nurture their talent and only after a massive investment like that, can you possibly expect a chance at an Olympics medal. Oh you need a lot more than just raw talent, the price tag for each Olympic medal is rather high, by that token.  It was estimated that each British medal at the 2012 Olympics cost about £4.5 million. Thus poorer countries like India simply have greater priorities and choose not to pour that kind of investment into sports - that is why India tends to do rather poorly at the Olympics. That is why even a relatively small country like Singapore (population 5.7 million) often ends up higher in the medal tally than India (population 1.33 billion) at the Olympics because Singapore is an extremely rich country that has invested heavily in sports. Surely there must be talent for sports in a country as big as India, but still, we're not expecting India to do well.

How do you feel about the Olympics?

That's it from me on this issue. What do you think about the Olympics - are you excited about the Rio 2016 Olympics? Are you watching the Olympics? What do you think about very rich countries like Azerbaijan and Singapore importing foreign talents to represent them at the Olympics? Please let me know what you think, many thanks for reading!