I used to hate watching Olympic swimming events. I'm not a person to watch sports for the sake of watching sports, you see. I had little interest in races won by Australians and Americans.
Conveniently, my interests changed this year. I've become a huge fan of the 100 metres freestyle... particularly the women's event. Yes, it may have something to do with the results. And I'm not talking about the fact the first black woman ever won gold in an individual swimming event (which interestingly speaks to historic racism
in the United States and across the world). In case you missed it,
there was also a young Canadian swimmer who tied for gold. Like most Canadians, I became an instant fan.
Funny how it is, but the Olympics start to matter when your country starts to win. Even modest Canadians would agree that Canada should at least make the podium in every sporting event. It's not that we're ultra-nationalistic, but when it comes to the Olympics, well yes, we are.
It's why the Canadian public doesn't protest the federal government pouring enormous amounts of funding into Olympics-related programming. We understand it takes money to win. The Own the Podium funding program prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics produced what Canadians wanted most: medals. Unlike our dismal performance in Calgary in 1988, where no golds were won, Canada raked in the most medals ever in 2010 including 13 golds. Quite a haul for a country one tenth the size of the United States.
The games in Rio displayed another good haul for a country that sees summer only four months of the year (two to three months on the Prairies!) Canada tied its medal count of 22 with its performance in 1996, when Donovan Bailey made us all forget about anabolic steroids (but seriously, will Ben Johnson ever be erased from our nation's collective memory?)
The world understands why wealthy countries continually dominate in the medal counts. Unless it's an event that requires minimal training costs, those countries with less funding produce athletes who are marginally slower, lower, and weaker than better-funded athletes. Sports are all about marginal differences. The time separating a first and fourth ranked performance may be a few hundredths of a second, but a gold medal is worth fame and fortune, and a fourth place finish is worth less than the cost to train.
That's because the training isn't cheap. In the four years leading up to Rio, Canada spent $139 million on making sure athletes would be competitive. Considering 314 Canadian athletes competed, that comes to about $442,000 per athlete and about $6.3 million per medal based on our results.
Britain is spending 350 million pounds ($595 million Canadian) between
2013 and 2017 to ensure its Olympic medal count remains respectable. I
won't hazard a guess as to how much the U.S. spends, but I'm
sure it's comparable to its percentage of world GDP (23% of world spending??) The race for Olympic medals is becoming the peaceful equivalent of the 20th Century nuclear arms race.
So the cost to win medals is outrageous, the cost to run the Olympics is horrendous and, in this year's host country, I would suggest scandalous.
Whether we like to confront the reality or not, the Olympics continues
to be a giant corporate profit-making, government debt-financed endeavour that leaves many host cities and countries worse off than before they hosted them. This will undoubtedly be the case for a city like Rio that's already on the verge of bankruptcy.
Just ask Montreal residents about the 1976 Olympics. Forty years later there are still hard feelings over the over-spending and corruption that nearly bankrupt the city. Facilities like the Big O, or the Big "Owe" as they like to call it, continue to drain money from the city's coffers to this day.
Ask Greeks about the 2004 Olympics and whether it was worth it after a decade of economic decline. Some argue that this costly event, adding at minimum $7 billion to government debt, helped push the country into a fiscal black hole.
Then there's the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. The Russian public may never fully realize the corruption and indefensible costs to host these games in Vladimir Putin's autocratic empire.
Now with all that said, I confess I'm still a sucker for the Games. I can't not watch. I suppose that's what keeps the Olympic movement going. After all, there's no better entertainment when your country is in the race to win.
