The Olympic Legacy
Kaitlin Dryburgh
The 2024 Paris Olympics provided some thrilling sporting moments, but after two and a bit weeks they’re all wrapped up (however the Paralympics will be starting soon). The ‘greatest show on earth’ is often portrayed as an event that will solve many an issue, improve surroundings, lift-up grassroots sports and provide that all important legacy. Yet, how much of that is really true?
As usual I got really caught up in it all. It’s safe to say the games started off on a shaky peg with the rather controversial opening ceromancy on the Seine. But like many others after a day or so I became swept up in anything from taekwondo, diving, BMXing and gymnastics.
The Olympics are in no way perfect. I think the downside to having a momentous event arrive in your city has been well documented and often the pros of hosting such an event rarely materialise in the way in which they were initially sold to the public. But at the same time it’s rather fun having never watched a sport such as BMX freestyle before and five minutes into coverage going crazy because someone just landed a massive 720 front flip, and pretending as if you know what that is.
It's two weeks of great entertainment. But after a closing ceremony that featured Snoop Dogg and Billie Eilish, it’s over for another four years.
The athletes find their way home and the evaluations of performance begin. It’s a cynical approach really. First off, we look at the overall medal haul, the Paris Olympics placed us at a ‘disappointing’ seventh, apparently our worst gold medal take-home in 20 years.
Furthermore, the results help to shape future funding. They don’t full on determine them, but they are considered. Katherine Grainger, chair of UK Sport, said that even if a sport doesn’t do as well as expected they wont be punished by having funding revoked, but the discussion is more centred around potential for the next Olympic games. So if the sport has had little success and the powers that be see there’s no capacity to improve, funding can be ruthlessly cut.
Funding in the first place isn’t exactly plentiful. Diver Jack Laugher who won bronze in Paris has used the adult subscription site OnlyFans to make ends meet. Although his dad had reassured reporters that all content is “nothing you couldn’t show your grandma”, Jack Laugher and other athletes shouldn't really need to do that.
The funding decisions off the back of these Olympic Games have not been announced yet but rest assured there will be some sports rather worried.
Stepping away from the elite sportspeople, the Olympics are always marketed as a legacy event. A sporting extravaganza that spurs on the next generation, gets people to try different things, and increases participation.
But how much do they really do to get people moving and involved?
As well as the obvious Olympic federation, UNESCO hold the belief that more medals and success equates to more participation at the grassroots level, in all fairness it would be a fair assumption to make. Yet the reality isn’t that simple. A 2022 House of Common’s report evaluating the legacy of the London 2012 games found that in the three years following the games participation in grassroots sport actually fell. So even though the assumption that the £8.8 billion spent on the games was to be a vehicle for more active citizens that didn’t quite work out. Figureheads of national sports organisations simply put it down to regular people not seeing how they could achieve what they saw on tv. Meanwhile a study in Canada found the same thing, medals don't equate to overall participation. As a policy model international events such as the Olympics do not return a local boost to sports, the money spent on them simply don’t achieve that.
There's a funny correlation between countries with high sports participation and Olympic medal counts (this especially referring to Europe). Quite often those with high sports participation in citizens, take your Norway and Sweden who are often top of the table, these countries often rank lower for Olympic medals. Whereas the reverse is true for countries with more successful medal hauls. Funnily enough both Norway and Sweden offer nothing to athletes who get on an Olympic podium. Read into that what you will.
The unfortunate thing is under the guise of wanting to boost public participation in sports are Government’s pushing for medals in order to boost their standings in the world. Because to a certain extent Olympic medals equal a successful country. The political dimensions of the Olympics cannot be understated, for example the US are intent on beating China in the medal count and previously Russia before they were banished. There are social and economic benefits to winning a gold medal, after all that’s why places like Hong Kong athletes around half a million pounds if they bring home a gold medal.
The 2012 London Olympics was continuously pushed as this event that was going to have a lasting impact, that would deliver more housing and better infrastructure to the city and further afield. Although I have fond memories of those Olympics, that’s not exactly how the Games turned out. For example one of the huge towers which was a part of the Olympic athletes village has turned into a luxury apartment building, instead of affordable housing.
But back to the sports aspects, the new venues created for the London Olympics were supposed to promote more participation and allow more people to play sports. This was the legacy. Yet at the start of this month it was reported that the equestrian centre in Greenwich that was built for the Olympic Games faces an uncertain future as funding cuts may force it to close its doors. In just 12 years since the games in London it doesn’t speak much to a legacy when venues are already struggling, never mind closing up. For £8.8 billion I’m sure this wasn’t what was initially envisioned.
With Paris now finished there is a lot of noise about the legacy of these Olympics. Many claiming it will help to turn around some of the poorest suburbs of Paris, and the new facilities will help sports flourish in the capital. But at the end of the day without sustained funding and commitment towards grassroots sports there will be no long lasting impact. That’s the key aspect that often gets missed.
As stated I immensely enjoy the Olympics and am more than happy to get engrossed in the hype, but they are no silver bullet. Top notch entertainment, good tourism adverts etc, but without a funded strategy backing them they won’t make huge gains in grassroots sport.