[bluepooch]

Well I haven't watched one minute but on the news it was hailed as a great success for Team GB ,the best medal haul ever with 5 .
Not bad to say we invested 30 million into the Olympic effort .Somehow it makes you wonder if we spend money wisely in this country .

[St Charles Owl]

Well I haven't watched one minute but on the news it was hailed as a great success for Team GB ,the best medal haul ever with 5 .
Not bad to say we invested 30 million into the Olympic effort .Somehow it makes you wonder if we spend money wisely in this country .

Its not exactly money that has been invested that could be used elsewhere anyway. Its lottery money that gets used for this, and that money cannot be used for education or health or any other public services anyway. For me this is a great way to use the lottery money, success in sport gives a boost to the public morale, more so for the summer games for sure but it still benefits society as a whole imo. Over here in the US, most athletes are “sponsored” through college scholarships or by corporate donations, one that is technically public money, on that is private.

[Devongone]

My concern is that this funding really is £30 million aimed at medals in sports for which, until the beast from the east hits this week, we lack natural ampitheatres. There are a couple of places to ski in Scotland or you're off to the snow dome in Tamworth, we've the odd ice rink, but we can only compete in short-track speed skating, because we do not have any facility to participate long course.

If we wanted to properly compete in Winter Olympics we'd have to invest much more, and not only in athletes in events in which world rankings suggest they are competitive.

There are Olympic sports in this country in which participation is much wider and in which wise investment might see rapid growth and improvement whose funding is either non-existent or severely restricted. Basketball is a mass participation sport but we've no history of being in medal contention, so it gets cut. Handball and volleyball are brilliant, exciting games both to play and watch - they get sweet FA ........

On the surface our funding policy, rewarding success, appears to bring home the medals. I'm not so sure long-term. For every encouragement there appears to be a discouragement and for every carrot one sport is offered, another is getting stick. My opinion is the current policy is DOUGH FOR SHOW!

[Dancingwilldoit]

Lets start a campaign to move the winter Olympics to summer. We could be much better then. Speed skating would become speed swimming, snowboarding - skateboarding, then cross country grass skiing, roller skating in mud, downhill cart racing instead of bobsleigh Just think we could even host them in the UK and waste a few more quid.

[bluepooch]

Great Idea Dancing .When I was a lad use to race down the pit tip on anything that slid or rolled . The summer Olympics for Team GB seems to be all about cycling and rowing, god knows how much we invest in those two minority sports .

[spireitematt]

Great Idea Dancing .When I was a lad use to race down the pit tip on anything that slid or rolled . The summer Olympics for Team GB seems to be all about cycling and rowing, god knows how much we invest in those two minority sports .

http://www.uksport.gov.uk/our-work/inves...ng-figures

[Devongone]

Almost every secondary school gym is set up for basketball. I find watching it fairly boring - it's just one score after another - but it's enjoyable to play, healthy and rewarding from the highest level of skill to the most modest. Mostly, however we decided to finance it, we could guarantee being thrashed by the Americans, so we are a very, long stride from medal contention ........ but Croatia is good at basketball ffs ........

We pump loadsamoney into equestrian sports swollen with rich, white people competing almost exclusively against rich, white people from other countries at which we've necessarily a very good chance of winning. It's all about whose mummy and daddy can buy the best horse anyway. And after all the Jamaicans are hardly likely to discover a penchant for Puissance, or the Ethiopians a love affair with Dressage ......... so we know our limited rivals inside out.

We are a country in which we are meltdown because I can see about seven flakes of snow floating past my window. Yet we see nothing ironic in expecting to win against Johnny Foreigner in snow sports, even though he's seeing seven foot of the stuff drifting outside his window. We are nature's imperialists - if the wind changed for ten minutes we'd be back colonising India.

But if we changed the nature of lottery funding so it could be used in other ways what would we do? Divert the Curling cash to renewing Trident, put it towards another useless arm of HS2 to join up some strange terminal outside London, with some other station positioned neatly in former ancient woodland between two northern cities George Osborne has decided to torture into becoming a powerhouse? Or maybe it could go into education so that when there are no jobs on the checkout at Morrisons the unemployable graduates can ponder whether they might have read the whole of Marcuse's One Dimensional Man instead of stealing that quotation from Wikipedia?

[St Charles Owl]

Any government of any color can't win in a debate about this. In 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics, there was uproar in the UK when we failed miserably in terms of the medals we won, we only won 1 Gold through Redgrave and Pinsent. This led to a government review about such things as school sport through to the athletes that did compete and what was holding them back in terms of performance. That is what led to the lottery money being used to help sport and sportspeople be able to reach their potential, not just at the Olympic games but at other events as well.

The lottery was set up not to be another "tax" where the government could use the money for anything, it was set up and designed to be used for a wide range of special projects that helped society in some way. Those decisions are always going to attract criticism from some one somewhere as to the merit of what is spent. Hence the no win situation. Personally I like to see us do well at sports and if the lottery money is helping that then I am all for it, but its not just about the elite athletes. Its about facilities, coaching, youth set up and talent spotting and nurturing. Its about making sure that our elite athletes can compete without the distraction of a full time job to finance their sports activity, but they only get that once they reach a certain level and the lottery money is helping us to produce more and more athletes that can compete at an international level, so its stated aim is working. Whether that is value for money is always up for debate.

Other countries and sports do it in other ways, the US uses the college system to produce athletes, football uses the professional clubs and their academies and other countries use government money directly to support sport, this is the UKs way of doing it.

[spireitematt]

I have no problem with seeing Britain doing well in the Summer/Winter Olympics, I think it's great. Shame the Premier League can't put more money into grassroots to help produce the players of tomorrow. The amount of money they are getting from Sky/BT etc they could put that back into grassroots to help facilities and it would create more Amateur and semi-pro teams too.

[St Charles Owl]

I have no problem with seeing Britain doing well in the Summer/Winter Olympics, I think it's great. Shame the Premier League can't put more money into grassroots to help produce the players of tomorrow. The amount of money they are getting from Sky/BT etc they could put that back into grassroots to help facilities and it would create more Amateur and semi-pro teams too.

I would think most professional clubs will argue that they are putting money into grassroots football through their academies. Not sure its the PL responsibility to do anything more than this, that responsibility falls to the FA. If the PL did spread their money about a bit more I would suggest they focus on the 92 professional teams in England, that is where their money could be used better anyway.