POSTED: July 26th 2011
NewsUpdate
NEIL WILSON: Who needs a medal?
THE NEIL WILSON COLUMN / An exclusive, authoritative series from Sports Features Communications
LONDON, Jul 26: ONCE upon a time, in another century when the modern Olympic Games was born, there was no medal table to judge one nation’s performances against other. There were no nations.
In 1896 you turned up, entered yourself and competed. In some events people of different nationality were partnered. The colours you wore were of your club, as with Americans from the Boston Athletic Association, or represented nothing at all.
National Olympic associations had yet to be created, so Baron de Coubertin’s brain-child was a competition between the people of the world. Which of them won proved nothing about the countries they came from.
Sadly, it changed. National teams arrived in 1908, and the United States and Britain immediately fell out. National flags were flown. Team sports were introduced.
Then came 1936 and the determination of the German government to underscore its political philosophy with success, and ultimately the Cold War with the bitter rivalry of the Soviet Union and United States. Medal tables kept score between the nations.
It continues to this day. In 2010 Canada made itself a laughing stock for a while at its Winter Olympics with its “Own The Podium” campaign. Now Britain threatens to follow the same path with its Olympic Association and its national sports body, UK Sport, trumpeting demands for the team to finish at least fourth in the medal table.
It is as if the hosting of the Games by a city comes with the necessity for its country to succeed in pool, track and sports hall.Yet clearly that was not what Sebastian Coe had in mind when he sold the IOC on legacy nor what its members took him to mean.
Hosting the Games brings an obvious advantage to the country’s competitors. The greater focus the challenge brings to its athletes, the greater they succeed. They want to perform well in front of their nearest and dearest.
And, as important, is the fear of national politicians that if the country’s athletes do not do well it will reflect badly on them and their policies. So in the build-up years they are persuaded to spend more on their support.
Spain won four gold medals in the first 21 Olympic Games. When it hosted in 1992 it won 13. Australia, Greece and China all won far more when they were hosts. So did the United States in 1984. The average improvement in the medal haul by a host nation exceeds 25%.
So in all likelihood Britain will exceed its traditional numbers next year, the British public will cheer mightily and its politicians congratulate themselves.
And in all likelihood as well, they will not do as well in Rio in four years, just as the US did not in 1988, Spain did not in 1996 and Greece did not in 2008. That will mean nothing more than the rise in 2012.
What matters, as Coe spelled out to the IOC, is that each Olympic Games leaves the world with another generation of young people challenged and motivated to fulfil their own potential. Medals, in time, just gather dust in a drawer.
NEIL WILSON reported his first Olympic Games in Munich in 1972. He has since covered another nine summer and nine winter Olympics for various newspapers, including The Independent and the Daily Mail with whom he has worked for the last 19 years as Athletics and Olympic correspondent. He was Britain's Sports Journalist of the Year in 1984 and is the author of seven books.
Keywords · Olympics · Baron de Coubertin · Seb Coe · London 2012
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