Who will rescue the Olympic ethos?

Sonia Sodha
The future of the Games will be in doubt until their endemic corruption is properly addressed
Saturday 6 August 2016 19.05EDT

his time four years ago, Id just completed a dramatic conversion from Olympics sceptic to
enthusiast. I was one of those annoying people who grumbled incessantly in the run-up to
2012 about what a waste of money it all was. But once it all started, like thousands of other
Londoners, I happily accepted the error of my ways.
Womens water polo, wheelchair basketball, climbing the Orbit: I enthusiastically snapped up
tickets for anything that was available and spent far too much in the 2012 shop on tacky gear that
now lies unworn at the back of my wardrobe. The only thing that marred my Olympics fever was
the envy I felt seeing the Gamesmakers in their orange-and-purple kit. If only Id had the foresight
to know it was going to be great and applied to volunteer.
As Rio kicks o and 2012 fades into the distance, my feelings about the Olympics have become
more mixed. There is something amazing about a competitive celebration of sport that brings
together athletes from countries and cultures that dont always see eye to eye, to compete on the
same terms. The Olympics are a reminder that every game is beautiful in its own way: it doesnt
take megabucks-earning footballers to provide nail-baiting, adrenaline-fuelled entertainment.
Then theres the national pride hosting the Olympics encourages people to celebrate their
culture and identity, whether by swaying to the Girl From Ipanema or cheering as the Queen
parachutes into the Olympic stadium.
But the Olympics have a darker side: the vast expense that host countries, rich or poor, are
expected to cough up. Brazil is spending almost $10bn on hosting the Olympics on top of the
$15bn it spent on the football World Cup two years ago. Yet it is a country racked by economic
inequality, while having to cope with nancial, political and health crises. Rios public-sector
workers have been paid weeks late, while hospitals say theyve run out of basic supplies. Is this
really $25bn well spent?
The timelag is partly to blame: the International Olympics Committee (IOC) picks host cities
seven years in advance. In 2009, booming Brazil would have seemed like a great bet for South
Americas rst Games.
But boom or not, cost is a universal problem. One Oxford study that looked at every Olympic
Games hosted since 1960 found the vast majority were blighted by overspend. The Sochi Winter
Games have been the most expensive yet, costing an eyewatering $51bn.
Proponents point to the economic benets of hosting the games. But try telling that to Greece in
the wake of Athens 2004. Too often, the promised long-term benets, used as PR to win round

sceptical publics, prove elusive.

Cities have become increasingly sceptical. After several cities pulled out of bidding for the 2022
Winter Olympics, the IOC was left with just two Beijing and Almaty, in Kazakhstan, both from
countries marred by terrible human rights records. In the end, they plumped for Beijing, which
wont even boast real snow. The bidding for the 2024 summer Games has also had high-prole
dropouts. It feels as if costlier should be tacked on the end of the Olympics motto faster,
higher, stronger.
Its not just the vast expense involved. The Sochi Games were put on at great cost to human
rights; similar concerns have been agged with respect to Rio. Cheating is nothing new, but
revelations that Russian security agents were actually involved in surreptitiously swapping
athletes urine samples suggest it has reached new depths. And the IOC has never properly put to
bed its issues with corruption.
It is hard not to feel that international sport has lost its way. But there has been the odd exception:
Los Angeles put on one of the most modest-ever Olympics in 1984, using pre-existing venues. It
even made a prot.
Without reforms more fundamental than the timid ones already oered by the IOC, the future of
the Olympics looks grim. The job of hosting will increasingly be left to wealthy states with dodgy
human-rights records, led by dictators happy to throw vast sums at vanity projects in order to
draw the eyes of the worlds media. A far cry from the original spirit in which the Olympics were
conceived.
The excesses involved undermine, rather than boost, the Olympic legacy. Four years on from
2012, when you can buy a Gamesmaker shirt for a ver on eBay, you have to wonder whether it
would have made much dierence if we had spent half the amount. Had we been allowed by the
IOC, we could have used existing venues across the country and boosted parts of the country
even more in need of investment than east London. Some of the cash saved could have been
spent on school sports budgets that have been slashed since 2012, much needed given that the
proportion of privately educated athletes in Team GB has risen from 20% to 28% since 2012.
This will be the rst Olympics in which people can cheer on the Refugee Olympic Team, which
surely represents the very best of the Olympic spirit. But imagine if some of the billions saved
from hosting a cheaper Olympics were spent on international aid to conict-stricken countries
and their low- and middle-income neighbours that host the vast majority of refugees, putting
Europe to shame?
To encourage a more cut-price Olympics will require radical reform from the IOC. It should favour
bids that plan to deliver the Games within the bounds of commercial sponsorship, as Los Angeles
in 1984. And it should encourage countries even whole regions to put on the Olympics, rather
than single cities. That might even allow Africa to host its rst Olympics, making it a genuinely
global endeavour.
To an Olympics fan like me, these reforms seem the denition of no-brainer. But I suspect the
reason they havent yet materialised might have something to do with the fact that they would
involve IOC ocials making do not just with a less glamorous Olympics, but also a less glamorous
set of perks.

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Topics
Rio 2016 Olympic Games Brazil Americas Rio de Janeiro Corruption index and barometer
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