London 2012: The Olympics: A Viable Alternative

Seb Coe and the London Olympics Organising Committee, David Cameron and his predecessors Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. All of them cling to a bipartisan consensus that everything to do with the Olympics is fine, nothing the International  Olympic Committee and their corporate sponsors demand needs to be questioned. It was a consensus which in London managed to unite apparent polar opposites - namely the maverick Tory candidate for Mayor Boris Johnson and the hard left Labour Candidate Ken Livingstone - in solid agreement that the Olympics would be without doubt a good thing for the city.

Add the sports media, led by the BBC, which appears to have had all critical faculties surgically removed in the cause of Olympic cheerleading, to amplify this all-embracing mood of agreement. Yet the discontent outside the parliamentary and media bubble is very obvious. It is not an organised campaign of resistance,  but on issues ranging from the lack of tickets to the privileges enjoyed by the IOC and sponsors, there is a mood of discontent. Whilst more broadly, there exists a deep-seated popular cynicism that the Games won’t provide much of the promised benefit. It is a discontent that is barely reported upon yet its basis is well-founded. There is scarcely a scrap of evidence from any previous Games of economic regeneration or a sustainable boost in employment. Not one recent Olympic host nation can point to an increase in sport participation levels as a result of the Olympics. And as for tourism, the Olympics leads to a decrease in visitors not an increase as the Travel Industry , which has no reason at all not to be one of the Games’ biggest supporters, has repeatedly pointed out.

Despite all this, not one politician, nor a single sports administrator, none of the well-resourced think-tanks, and no journalist or broadcaster has come up with a  plan for a better Olympics for all. This is what my book, "Why The Olympics Aren’t Good For Us, And How They Can Be", uniquely sets out to do.

I love sport; my book is not in any sense anti-Olympics, and I joyfully admit I will be amongst the first to be consumed by the excitement of the Games once they begin. But I also firmly believe that they could have been so much better. The discontent with how London 2012 has been organised to the effective exclusion of the many who could so easily have have been part of them is far too important to ignore as the Gold Medals are hung around Team GB athlete’s necks.

My ‘New Five Rings’ are really quite simple. They're founded on the core democratic principle that, to make a ‘home’ games worthwhile, they must be organised with the objective that the maximum number of people must be able to take part. If not, then it's the remote control and the sofa for most of us, and thus the Games might as well be anywhere else but here, minus both the expense and the inconvenience.

My 'New Five Rings'

Ring One: A decentralised Games, taking place all over the country, and a local Games for the large parts of the population who don't live in London. If such a structure is good enough for the World Cup, as the largely successful World Cup 2006 in Germany proved, why not for the Olympics? Provided the temptation to build expensive new facilities and infrastructure of dubious post Games use is not indulged, this should be the new model for the Oympics and the single most important change. With major elements of the Olympic programme becoming geographically accessible, the Games become something the whole country, not just one city, can feel part of.

Ring Two: A games with the objective of maximum participation.  As a result of decentralisaton, it would be possible to utilise all the huge stadiums Britain possesses. Though these are mainly football grounds, they are capable of being used for a vast range of Olympic sports. Centralising all events in London venues with much smaller capacities than would otherwise be available slashes the size of audience who can attend, thereby increasing the ticket price for the few, instead of lowering those prices for the many.

Ring Three: Shift the bulk of the programme outside of stadiums entirely, and instead encourage large scale, free-to-watch events. A cycling Tour of Britain, a  Round Britain Yachting race, a canoe marathon and open water swimming events in our Lakes and Lochs to suggest but a few. One measure of London’s chronic lack of ambition is the scrapping of the Marathon route, one of the few current free-to-watch Olympic events. The 26.2 London Marathon route which is lined each year with hundreds of thousands of spectators has been  replaced by 4 six mile laps of the same circuit, reducing the potential audience by a 75%; a disgraceful and massive cut in public participation which has scarcely been commented upon by media commentators too busy with their LOCOG cheerleading.

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Ring Four: Olympic sports that are universally accessible. The same countries always win in the Equestrian, Yachting and Rowing events, leaving entire continents without the slightest hope of a single medal. The same goes for track cycling, fencing, modern pentathlon and other significant parts of the whole programme. These are sports that require vast investment, specialist facilities and, with the exception of cycling, have next to no mass appeal.  Compare the breadth of countries which have won boxing, football, middle and long distance running medals. These are sports requiring no expensive kit or facilities,  use simple rules, and have massive appeal.  Sports should be chosen because of their accessibility and then given targets to prove it. If they fail to meet those targets, they should be dropped and replaced with others.  My favourite candidate for reintroduction is the tug-of-war, which last featured at the 1920 Games. It is one of the most basic sports imaginable, all that is required is a length of sturdy rope. The teams could be mixed, which is another plus, and in a packed stadium, a tug of war competition would also be a potential crowd pleaser - at least as much as, if not more than, some of the privileged sports currently enjoying Olympic status.

Ring Five: An official emblem which is a symbol of sport, not a logo for the sponsors. Reverse the priorities, the only use permitted for the precious Olympics Five Rings should be by voluntary and community groups on a not-for-profit basis to promote sport, The sponsors banned from any use of the Five Rings. They need sport just as much as sport needs their millions yet sport repeatedly sells itself short bending over backwards to accommodate the sponsors ever-escalating demands. The biggest sponsor of London 2012? The British taxpayer.

Is my alternative impractical? Not a bit of it. What I’m proposing is a better Games, for more people, using a greater range of existing facilities. A home Games with a real sense of popular participation, and with much greater scope to inspire people to take up sport, and promote those parts of Britain outside London’s already familiar West End tourist circuit

My book is neither anti-Olympics nor against sport. I want to build a new Olympics, to take the best of the Games I first fell in love with, Munich ‘72 (I still have the sticker album to prove it). Forty years on, those Games are justifiably remembered for the tragedy of the Israeli athletes who were taken hostage and all ultimately lost their lives. But I also remember those Games for Mary Peters winning the Pentathlon, hauling her ample frame over the high jump, and appearing to defy gravity as she did so. I remember the impish Olga Korbut dipping her head at the end of her floor gymnastics routine and putting the Cold War arms race to shame. And perhaps most of all, I remember US 800m runner Dave Wottle wining his race with the most astonishing run from the back ever seen (check it out on You Tube), before forgetting to take off the battered old golf cap he always raced in for the medal ceremony. In 2008, the US magazine Running Times described Wottle’s 1972 victory as marking "the end of innocence for sport, for the Olympics.” Nowadays, wearing his cap would more than likely be a contractual product placement obligation, then it was just a lucky charm he forgot about. 1972 introduced the Games to security as we know it today. Montreal 1976 was the first Games to become such a vanity project that it actually made a financial loss. Moscow 1980 was the target of a US-led boycott following the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan (for some countries nothing changes, just the nationality of the occupying force). And Los Angeles ‘84, held in the heartland of the US Right’s Reaganomics of that era  was the first overtly commercialised Games as the IOC’s licensed response to what was becoming a failing project. Swiftly followed in 1986 by the IOC approving the professionalisation of all Olympic athletes.

Such is the history of the Olympics  over the past 40 years. My point is that there is an alternative, founded on principles of equality, diversity and universal access. An alternative which has no reason not to challenge a model founded on the absolute primacy  of corporate power, and the unquestioned benefits of com modification. We should be asking why has no such alternative, to date, been offered? "Why The Olympics Aren’t Good For Us" looks to redress that balance. Let the debate begin.

Published this week: Why The Olympics Aren’t Good For Us, And How They Can Be costs £8 (£6 kindle edition) and is exclusively available from www.orbooks.com