UK Regrets Hosting 2012 Olympics
Are getting cold feet and backpedalling also Olympic events?
Vaughn Palmer, Vancouver Sun, Saturday, November 29, 2008
VICTORIA - From London comes word that some denizens of the United Kingdom are having second thoughts about the wisdom of hosting the Olympics in the summer of 2012.
"Even the government is going off the Olympics," declared a recent headline in the Guardian newspaper. "Is it too late to give them to the French?"
For an Englishman to propose giving anything (other than perhaps a communicable disease) to the French is noteworthy in and of itself.
Still, the evidence of disenchantment is there, starting with the widely reported comment of cabinet minister for the Olympics, Tessa Jowell.
"Had we known what we know now, would we have bid for the Olympics?" she asked rhetorically at a public event earlier this month. "Almost certainly not."
Jowell has presided through earlier rounds of disenchantment, most notably the fourfold escalation in the budget for the Games and related projects.
Typical for the Olympics. Budget overruns are as much a part of the Games as the opening and closing ceremonies.
But Jowell continued to defend the Games as the price tag soared from the initial, less-than-$5-billion to the current approaching-$20-billion estimate.
Her recent souring appears to have been prompted by the emerging prospect that the alleged spinoff benefits -- tourism, sponsorships, other economic impacts -- may be endangered by the global economic downturn.
"The important thing is to understand the whole of what I said and not a little bit which has been taken out of context," she said in a statement clarifying the remarks quoted above.
"What I was reflecting was that had we known that the economy was going to a downturn, the perception of some people would have been that the Olympics would have been a distraction and not a solution to this central problem."
Her concerns are borne out by other coverage from the British papers.
"London 2012 suffers sponsor shortfall," to quote another Guardian headline. "Big spenders dry up in economic downturn."
Other stories noted the impact of the credit crisis on private backers, plus the increasing likelihood that the government will have to draw on contingency funds at a time when it has more urgent priorities.
This has led, in turn, to calls for scaling back spending on the Games.
"I cannot make sense with the approach of national austerity to continue to pour crazy sums of money into two weeks of sport," wrote columnist Simon Jenkins. "Even Nero would have balked at so much circus at a time of so little bread."
But this talk of an "austerity Olympics" has Games boosters fighting back.
You can imagine the arguments: Commitments already made. False economy. Bad for the athletes. National pride at stake. And so on.
Plus there are those who claim that the Games, far from being a unnecessary luxury, are precisely the right tonic for a troubled economy.
Lord Sebastian Coe, chair of the London organizing committee: "This is a very good project to be having at the moment. In good times or bad this is a project that really has an extraordinary impact."
Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympics Committee, even managed to suggest that all that spending in the face of economic adversity would be positively inspirational: "The Games remind us that the transient difficulties of life can be overcome through hard work and determination."
And so much smarter than, say, retooling the manufacturing sector, investing in scientific research, or educating the next generation.
The British Columbian, watching this from afar, will doubtless have mixed feelings.
The summer Olympics are a more expensive proposition than the winter version, so the the mother country's financial stake is far greater.
But the opening of the London Games is still more than 1,300 days away. Plenty of time for the global economy to cycle through a significant downturn and recover.
Here in B.C., the reckoning is much closer. Just 440 days away, according to the countdown clock on the Vanoc website.
The tighter time frame makes the B.C.-based Games and its reputed economic spinoff benefits more of a hostage to international economic fortune.
Already we've heard the anxieties about visitors, sponsors, private investors.
We've also seen how it is not necessarily all glory for politicians to stand in close proximity to the Games. Just ask the civic NPA and its liquidated majority on Vancouver city council.
Taxpayers should wish the Games every success, knowing how the Olympic backers always contrive for the public to assume most of the financial risks.
But as the global economy darkens, I have my doubts that the 2010 Games will turn out to be an unmixed blessing, either for the politicians who supported them or the taxpayers picking up the tab.