London 2012 Olympics

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Well we don't really have anywhere to talk about the Olympics yet (good or bad) - though we've had a thread about the infrastructure, nothing really yet about the actual games

So here it is! A place to talk about anything Olympic related

I see Team GB Football has a final warm up match tonight against Brazil (pre-tournament favourites) - who thought that up? If we have ANY thoughts of progressing in the tournament, is it really wise to play the pre-tourney favourites less than a week before the start?

Smacks of promo material only, and not a wise sporting decision - I understand we are 1-0 down already - is it being shown anywhere?

Of course now the games are over its much busier in town again....boo.
I was never that fussed about the medal count being huge , more about the sporting moments you see being memorable and doing well enough to hold your head up.
Just 16 years ago, we won one gold. its really beggars belief how well we have done since then and as long as we stay around the top 10 in the medals table Id be pretty happy personally.

Just catching up on this thread, interesting to read the whole value for money debate.

A question for Doc: now that the Olympics are over, do you feel we had VFM?

I think it is very difficult to compare sports, as all golds are not equal. That's why archery had about 4,000 people watching it, whilst athletics had 80,000 and I'm sure the Men's 100m final would still have been sold out if the stadium capacity was 10 times that. For some sports, the Olympics is the be all and end all, and the culmination of 4 years of training and competing. For other sports (e.g. football, tennis), it's just another event in the calendar.

I feel that Britain should always try and host big events like the Olympics and Footy world cup. As a nation we are passionate about sport, for a start we seem to have invented half of them. We have the venues, the fans and the participants. Financially, these things never make sense, but we are one of the few countries with the money (just about) to do it so we might as well treat ourselves from time to time.

Ray - value for money? If you look at it from a total economics viewpoint, then no because we spent billions on reconstructing one area of London, at a time when the cash could have been used to better use. At the time of winning the bid, the economic outlook was much better so unlucky to be shafted just after we won it. Will we see a return on the investment, well maybe but not in the short term. Public housing stocks in the East end of London will be good, and some of the facilities will hopefully help locals. The west end of London has seen a massive fall in footfall, but maybe because the games were seen as a sucess worldwide, maybe future visitor numbers will increase, but who knows. I suppose there are many Londoners who are sick of the whole thing because of the disruption. A feel-good factor for everyone is a good thing but again its only a short term gain, before the hangover kicks in.

The amount of cash pumped into these sports is a moot point. CVC looks like falling on his sword, because he stated he would if we didn't win 8 athletics medals. He fell 2 short, but had 3-golds more than his target. Some athletes peaked for diamond league events to enrich themselves and failed miserably over the last week or so. So I really believe that the whole subject of 'elite funding' needs reviewing. There were however a few sports that over achieved, and there were others like swimming that didn't. The cyclists and rowers smashed it as they were coached to peak at the correct time and of course had management/infrastructure/processes in place, whereas some sports didn't. There were some great GB performances in track and field, who did break their necks for the cause and will learn a great deal from it.

Theres going to be politicaians of all colours trying to take credit for the last 2-weeks, but besides the ticketing fiasco only Coe and his team should take credit. But Australia went through exactly the same as us. They pumped cash in after Atanta and barcelona and made hay in Sydney. They, like us love their sports and loved been seen as a world leader in sports, but because Australia decided to help their economy, they cut sports funding, which has shown their worst Olympics performance for a long time. This has gone down badly at home but their economy is moving, so politics and sports are still entwined. Over here the government will have to make some cuts to sports funding, even though they are keeping quiet about it for now. So we will see some big losers before Rio and I expect that we will not see over 1,000 athletes travelling to Brazil, but thats after the next election.

Politicians love telling us that the games were on time and on budget, but the reality is that in 2005 when when we put in the bid, the budgeted costs were 32.37 billion. In 2007 the budget was increased to £9.3 billion and today the costs are £12 billion and expected to rise by up to another £2 billion. Government borrowing has gone through the £2 trillion milestone ....

Me too Doc! Was fed up of hearing about it beforehand, and thought that I would just tune in for the stellar events, but after a couple of days I was hooked on all of it.

The BBC certainly pushed the boat out on this one, I thought that the coverage was very good.

We have a gold postbox 3 miles down the road, courtesy of Mark McKeever.

I've just been watching an interview with gymnast Beth Tweddle after the reception for all the athletes at Buckingham Palace last night and she kept referring to "TeamGB" and "ParalympicsGB". Now I'm not usually one of the PC brigade (as most of you know ) but in this instance, shouldn't all the athletes, able-bodied or disabled, be decribed as representing "TeamGB"? They all represented our country in their respective events, so why the discrimination?

I think it was something to do with the Olympics and Paralympics being run by separate bodies LP - and so with different sponsors

Agree it seems a bit picky but I suppose if she'd just used TeamGB to include them all, then it may have seemed as if she was ignoring the paralympians

Davie's spot on there LP, because I was surprised to see a different design and logo on a shirt Mrs Doc brought me back from the paralympics. Seperate body, seperate marketing, seperate everything. So in reality the IOC is is not very PC