Why The Olympics Aren't Good for Us

Mark Perryman on CNN.com: Why the Olympics Aren’t Good for Us, But Could Be

The London Olympics have been promoted as of great benefit for the host city and nation. The organisers insist that the lasting value of the facilities built, the tourism the Games will attract, and the popular participation in sport they will promote, all make the spending of billions of pounds of public money an excellent investment. Such claims have been greeted with near unanimous agreement across mainstream British politics and the media. But outside the capital’s commentariat, enthusiasm for the Games has been less uniform. There are those who remain stubbornly sceptical of the boosters’ claims. Economists question whether the Olympics will provide the kind of economic regeneration London’s East End has been promised. Sports coaches doubt the linkage often made between Gold medal successes and raising rates of popular participation in sport. And the tourism industry has produced reports showing that previous host cities have experienced an overall fall in visitors and their spending during Olympic years.

Mark Perryman returns back from the Ukraine following England’s exit on penalties against Italy, and considers how national identity and internationalism co-mingles in sport, and will continue to do so at London 2012.

David Hemery burning his way round the track to victory in the 400m hurdles, Mexico 1968. Mary Peters defying gravity as she hauls her frame over the high jump bar to lift pentathlon Gold in Munich, 1972. David Wilkie winning in the pool, Montreal 1976. Coe and Ovett enjoying 1500m and 800m glory, Moscow 1980. Decathlete Daley Thompson acting the golden cheeky chappy, Los Angeles 1984. Great Britain beating Germany in the men’s hockey final, Seoul 1988. Christie and Gunnell triumphant on the track at Barcelona 1992. Steve Redgrave promising he’d never be seen near a boat again after winning his fourth straight Gold with Matthew Pinsent at Atlanta 1996, before doing precisely that to win his fifth and final Gold, once more with Pinsent, at Sydney 2000. Kelly Holmes grabbing an eye-popping 800m and 1500m golden double against all the odds in 2004. Hoy, Pendleton, Adlington and Ohuruogu leading Team GB’s Gold medal charge to fourth in the Beijing 2008 Medals Table.

From a late sixties childhood to becoming a twenty-first century fiftysomething I can measure out my life in the glow of the quadrennial summer Olympics. Each and every Games is remembered warmly for the achievements of other nations, as well as my own: 1968 for Bob Beamon’s long jump leap beyond the limits of human capacity. 1972, for the impish Olga Korbut tilting her head at the close of her floor routine in the gymnastics hall. 1972, 1976 and 1980 for Cuban Teofilo Stevenson’s supreme feat of winning three consecutive Golds in the Olympic boxing ring. (Teofilo was an amateur heavyweight boxer who never turned professional despite the millions of dollars offered to him by US promoters). And so it goes on.

Having just returned from Euro 2012 I can report that this co-mingling of nationalism and internationalism in sport was to be found aplenty in Poland and the Ukraine. The simplistic assumption of some that nationalism and internationalism are polar opposites and can never coincide has been undermined by every World Cup and European Championship that I’ve been lucky enough to follow England at since ‘Euro 96. Some of the nastiest versions of nationalism have regulalry shared space with popular and inspiring internationalism. The single European currency? For the duration of the Euros, it’s been football, not a bank note, that has united Europe, and separated it too, at least for the ninety minutes a games lasts, plus extra time and penalties.

One of the most interesting aspects of England fans’ presence at this year’s European Championship has been the vigorous refutation of the ugly stereotyping of the Ukraine as a racist, violent and inhospitable place. Few would deny that hooliganism exists there, or that it often has far right connections. But to smear an entire nation in a sensationalist manner, as the now notorious BBC Panorama programme which alleged that for fans travelling to Euro 2012 the Ukraine and Poland would be some kind of racist hell-hole combined with hooliganism running riot, was both crude and entirely lacking in context. For example at England’s game in the Ukraine in 2009, plus European club games in Ukraine played by Arsenal, Spurs, Man City, Everton and Fulham there had been no such incidents of racism or hooliganism. None of this was mentioned. Sol Campbell. who warned fans not to travel to the Euros found himself to be the fall guy for the fans and the butt of one of the most loudly sung chants at many games. ‘Fuck Off Sol Campbell, We Do What We Want.’ This is not the sort of internationalism the many are accustomed to. But England fans, both black and white, who themselves have regularly suffered misrepresentation in the media because of the hostile actions of a minority, were clear in their rejection of the same demonization of others

For every tournament since 1996, with the exception of 2008, the England football team have qualified for either the European Championship or World Cup. The Ashes were won by England in 2005, 2009 and 2011. And the Rugby World Cup was won by England in 2003. Over this period there is surely little doubt that Eric Hobsbawm’s observation that ‘the imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people’ (read 15 in the case of rugby) has become especially pertinent for an England enduring the challenges to national identity thrown up by the devolution settlement introduced by New Labour in 1997. Now we have the new dynamic of Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, seeking to lead his country out of the Union within the next two years. Like it or not, 2012 will be the year of the Union Jack, stylishly redesigned for the Team GB kit by Stella McCartney. Whether this will prove a temporary respite from the seemingly irreversible drift to separation, or a more profound revival of Britishness, remains to be seen.

In this summer of Euro 2012 and the London Olympics, both dominated by product sponsors, Mark Perryman points to a third, major sporting event with less emphasis on corporate control and more on popular participation.

Modern sport isn’t simply a contest between teams or individuals. It is also increasingly an arena which corporate power seeks to exploit. During this summer of major sporting events it’s clear that the governing bodies behind the European football finals and the Olympic Games are following a strikingly similar agenda, one shaped by drive of business to make money out of people’s love for sport. That generally starts with top-down control.

Here are two examples from Euro 2012, from where I’m writing:

First, consider the so-called ‘Fan Zones’, introduced at the World Cup in 2006 and a feature of World Cups and European Championships ever since. These large privatised spaces are all about regimentation and commerce. Whatever the individual characteristics of the country you are in, the environment in the fan-zones is more- or-less the same. When it comes to refreshments, only fast food, soft drinks and beer provided by the authorised sponsors are available. Here in the Ukraine, the chances of sampling local fare in the fan zones are next to zero. Every available space is taken up by corporate catering. And the big screens, constantly relaying sponsors’ messages, are the most prominent advertising platform of all. It’s not easy to discover the country beyond these sanitized arenas but significant numbers of us have been making the effort. Getting out on the local tourist trail, or even better beyond it, and soaking up the atmosphere in local pubs and cafes while taking in the odd game on television with a commentary we can barely understand, is well worth it.

The situation is not much better inside the football stadiums. Like at Wembley, prior to kick-off the PA systems are turned up to such a high volume that you cannot hear yourself think, let alone cheer or jeer. Two announcers, one stationed at each end of the ground, broadcast separately to the fans of the two teams involved. Their pronouncements are accompanied on the pitch by the frenzied dancing of opposing groups of female cheerleaders, each in the team’s colours. For more than an hour ahead of the start of the game those of us in the crowd re implored by these over-amplified antics to cheer our side. This is something no group of England fans who have made it all the way out here needs to be told to do – it merely drowns us out. Fortunately the barrage from the PA does not extend to the game itself when the speakers are finally turned off and the noise we make ourselves can at last be heard.

The resistance to the top-down regimentation of corporate control at the Euros finds a corollary in the rising, if still largely unexpressed, discontent at the direction in which the London Olympics is heading. Not much of this takes any kind of formal political shape: the bipartisan parliamentary consensus that London 2012 is unquestionably a good thing, reflected by the unanimity between Boris Johnston and Ken Livingstone in the recent London Mayoral election, remains firmly in place.

But, alongside Euro 2012 and the Olympics, a third major event of this sporting summer provides an alternative model that lies beyond the stranglehold of the sponsors. After Mark Cavendish’s success last year in winning the Green Jersey, and with Bradley Wiggins a serious contender this year to win the coveted Yellow, the Tour de France (Le Tour) will be followed more closely than ever before in Britain. Raced for almost a month along the public roads of France and neighbouring countries, the crowds that line the route are huge – and entirely without tickets. Stretched out over tens of kilometers each day, this is a crowd impossible to control but there is rarely a hint of trouble and disruptions are rare. Of course Le Tour is heavily sponsored, but the scale of the event represents a major shift towards popular participation in place of corporate control.

An Olympic Games which took Le Tour as its inspiration might have added to the Marathon, Race Walks and Triathlon (the only three un-ticketed events in the current programme) a multi-stage cycling race which could be watched from the nation’s roadsides, a yachting Round Britain race for the coastal communities to enjoy, or even a canoe marathon to be followed from the banks of the country’s canals and rivers. Perhaps a knock-out rowing competition along the Oxford and Cambridge boat race course could also have been included. All these events would be free to watch with spectators beyond the reach of the sponsors. If such crowds can be accommodated for the Diamond Jubilee, why not for the Olympics?

A programme shaped around these kinds of events wouldn’t need the construction of expensive new facilities, of questionable use after the Games are over. The money could instead be allocated to encouraging popular participation in sport, during the Games and after. Of course any such reimagining is too late for London 2012. But as the barrage of self-congratulatory hoopla from the London Games organisers and their media backers intensifies, the need for some critical perspective is greater than ever. This once-in-a-lifetime occasion could have directly involved many more people, at thrilling, free-to-watch events around the nation, and with lower costs to the taxpayer. Now who’s going to argue with that?

As another batch of very high-priced tickets released today, Mark Perryman suggests less tickets for sponsors, bigger venues around the country and lower prices would have given us a People’s Games.

With the Jubilee over and the England football team unlikely to provide much of a lasting distraction at the Euros, the 50-day countdown to the London Olympics is now entering serious overdrive.

Right from the start of the bidding competition back in 2005, hosting a ‘home’ Olympics was sold to the British public as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity. This was no idle boast: along with football’s World Cup (which England can’t even think of hosting till at least 2026) the Olympics is undoubtedly the biggest show on earth. Spread across 26 different sports and with over 200 countries competing, its reach and appeal is enormous.

The sales pitch of the Olympic organisers was explicit: this was an opportunity to be there while history was being made, to witness something unforgettable first-hand, to bring the memories of past Games watched on TV to vivid life. The Games organisers did little or nothing to dampen expectation that tickets for the Games would there for the taking.

Seasoned sports observers treated such inducements with scepticism. They knew from past experience that demand for tickets would inevitably massively outstrip supply. Huge numbers of tickets would be reserved for sponsors and special guests, especially for the major events, and unavailable to the public. Despite pressure, the organisers have refused to release details until after the Games concerning how many tickets have been reserved in this fashion.

The organisers have sold the Games short by offering enormous quantities of tickets as part of sponsorship packages. Sponsors are involved in the Games primarily to promote their products – a reduction in the ticket concessions available would be unlikely to put them off. And those turning away would quickly be replaced by others queuing up for the commercial opportunities the Games present.

But making more of sponsors’ seats available to the public is only a start. A core organising principle of the Olympics should have been the direct involvement of the maximum number of people. With a Games comprising 26 different sports there are lots of possibilities for imaginative alternatives to the highly-centralized model that has been adopted.

Take hockey for example: Instead of being played as a mini-World Cup in a single stadium with a 15,000 capacity inside the Olympic Park, hockey could have been played across the West MIdlands. Stadiums there include two in Birmingham, one each in Wolverhampton, Coventry and Sandwell – all considerably larger than the specially built one in Stratford. The team GB squad could have been based in the area, combining their training and preparation with outreach work in schools and communities to promote the sport. A local opening ceremony for all the nations taking part would have helped to cement civic pride in hosting this part of the Olympics.

Or consider boxing. Manchester would have been an excellent host for this sport. The biggest crowd for Ricky Hatton’s fights was at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium when over 40,000 people turned up, many more than those who will get tickets to the Olympic boxing finals. Manchester could have combined the Etihad Stadium with Old Trafford, capacity 75,000, and the MEN arena too for the earlier rounds.

Volleyball? Yorkshire boasts large stadia in Leeds, two in Sheffield, as well as Bradford, Huddersfield, Hull and Doncaster. A regional host for this sport makes good sense and would increase the numbers who can watch. With a modest degree of reconfiguration and specially designed surfaces to lay on top of football pitches, the possibility for making a reality of an entirely different model for the Olympics is clearly evident.

Of course there will always be some events for which no stadia would be large enough to accommodate. But the spread of the programme should allow anyone who wants to come along to see at least some part of the Games. Sports such as rowing, taekwondo and swimming would, in this way, be put on the map in place of the usual roster of cricket, rugby and football.

Football is the one part of the Olympics programme which has been organised in the fashion I’m suggesting. But it hasn’t attracted the demand of tickets the organizers hoped for. I believe there are two reasons for this: Firstly, in Britain, the football tournament is regarded as not even third or fourth rate compared to the World Cup or European Championships. Secondly, people have been rightly indignant that the regionalization of the tournament is little more than a sop to Scotland, Wales and the north, the one bit of the Games they can have. Giving the tournament a regional base, in the way that the North West was used for the 2005 Women’s European Football Championships, would have been more likely to create a popular connection to Olympic football.

So why the lack of ambition? Because the Games organisers have preferred a centralized, elitist model that combines relatively small venues and high ticket prices escalating steeply from a minimum of £20. The alternative arrangement, with the Games spread across the country, would have vastly increased spectator capacity and allowed for ticket prices that are substantially lower…

Does any of this matter? Yes, because any democratic project for sport should mean the involvement of as many people as possible. London 2012 actively prevents this. Instead of a People’s Games in which we can all be involved, it’s tickets for the lucky few, and the TV remote for the rest of us.

Mark Perryman questions the claim that that Participation will be a main legacy of the London 2012 Games. 

The Olympic Motto “The most important thing is not the winning but the taking part” represents many of the finest ideals of any model of sport as democratic, participative and accessible. As the Jubilee hoopla fades away the forthcoming summer of sport – Euro 2012, a serious British challenger to win the Tour de France, Wimbledon fortnight, overseas rugby tours to the southern hemisphere, a domestic test match series and the first, and last home Olympics for most of our lifetimes – will no doubt test those sentiments  to the full. A nation that invented a decent proportion of the world’s team sports has a perhaps not wholly unforgivable difficulty coping with the countries which it exported those games to, promptly defeating the inventor-nation. However adding in a martial and imperial tradition, and CLR James’ famous maxim ‘What do they know of cricket who only cricket knows’, indicates the need for a social and political context in which to understand the British as not the world’s best losers.

Now well into its second week the Olympic Torch Relay on the surface would seem to represent all that is good about sport, something for all to be part of, producing a tidal wave of enthusiasm for the Games and largely minus this pumped-up jingoism. Criss-crossing the country, coming to a city, town, or village near you. Isn’t this what the Olympian ‘taking part’ should be all about? Not exactly, instead this venture reveals the flimsy populism combined with chronic lack of ambition that London 2012 has come to symbolise. The Relay has of course proved popular; almost any event with this scale of publicity and coverage would surely attract inquisitive crowds. And the passion is entirely genuine. But how is that energy being connected to participation. Beyond waving a flag, cheering from the kerbside, providing a backdrop to the sponsors’ branding and celebrity torchbearers, what opportunities are there to take part?

A Torch Relay for all would have started off with popular participation as its organising principle. Each 10k leg the roads and pathways closed for the torchbearer to be followed by fun runners and active walkers, London Marathon or Great North Run style. Both of these events admirable and effectively combine elite competition with mass participation. Using these as a model the Relay could have been the biggest venture ever in participative sport. Yet none of this gets a look-in because it might deflect, quite literally overrun, the sponsors message instead. Villages towns, localities within a city each given their stretch of the route to run or walk down, other legs given over to cyclists, canoeist, ramblers and fell-runners, yachts and any other mode of human powered, or human steered transport. All of this would have amounted to involving far more than the really quite limited numbers in the London 2012 version of the Torch Relay and directly connected to initiatives that provide the vital access to participation in sport the Olympics at its best can provide.

Translating even such a grand project as this though into the Olympic promise of boosting participation however remains no mean feat. Sport, as CLR James indicated, is socially constructed. The popularity of sport as a TV spectacle, fashion statement and branding target for sponsors since the late twentieth century has been accompanied by a headlong decline in participation in organised sporting activity. Those sports which have enjoyed any kind of growth have largely been individual, as a source of recreation rather than competition. The irony of the Olympics is that not only does its structure forcefully limit the possibility to participate but also its model of what constitutes meaningful sport is as likely to discourage participation as encourage it.

With John Carlos, one of the Mexico ‘68 podium protesters, on a speaking tour of Britain, Mark Perryman describes the continuing relationship the Games has with race.

United on the Mexico podium by their fierce opposition to racism Tommie Smith, Peter Norman and John Carlos used the medal ceremony for what has become an iconic moment of public protest. Its durability as an image of anti-racism in sport and beyond is testament to the global platform the Olympics provided. Even before satellite TV and digital media, the dignified audacity of the three medal-winners became an overnight world-wide news story.

The Sydney Olympics in 2000 offered another iconic Olympic memory of sport and race. As the twenty-first century began Eric Hobsbawm’s description of the role of sport in providing a popular expression of national identity amongst the debris of globalisation became increasingly relevant: “The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of named people.” As part of this process a sporting contest can sometimes crystallise social or political changes within a nation. When Cathy Freeman, the Australian Aboriginal sprinter, streaked around the track to win the 400 meters gold medal, kitted out in an all-in-one skin-tight green and gold Lycra suit complete with hood, she was chased every inch of the way by the light of thousands of camera flashes capturing her moment of glory. This was more than an instant of supreme sporting achievement. For Australia’s Aboriginal community it represented recognition and inclusion from the majority white population – however temporary it ultimately proved to be. Inequality, discrimination, racism, and disputes over land rights didn’t disappear just because Cathy was a national heroine. Her success was the exception, not the rule, but for a moment it pointed to a different version of Australia.

These moments of opportunity provided by sport are vital in constructing any kind of progressive conversation around issues of race and nationality. Especially in the wake of London’s 7/7, one day after the city was selected to host the 2012 Games, a caricature of multiculturalism has been used as cover to break with the kind of celebratory diversity that the Olympics bid had seemed, at least for one of those moments, to represent. In Singapore, as the London bid presentation approached its climactic ending, Seb Coe welcomed on stage thirty youngsters, “Each from East London, from the communities who will be touched most directly by our Games. Thanks to London’s multicultural mix of 200 nations, they also represent the youth of the world…” And what a mix too. “Their families have come from every continent. They practice every religion and every faith.” Was there any box in the table of diversity these kids didn’t tick? It was a compelling image of London as a global city. But this was a flimsy populism, a kind of corporate multiculturalism, a presentation of a cosy team picture of unity through diversity which obscured the realities of representation.

As he paraded the youngsters ‘representing’ London across the Singapore stage it might have been useful to ask Coe, or even the kids themselves, a few questions: What was it like living in and growing up in Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney, among the poorest boroughs in the city? What jobs did their parents have, if they had jobs at all? What opportunities in terms of health, education and housing could they look forward to? How confident were any of them that they and their families would be able to afford the tickets to watch the Games they were on the stage to promote?

The forces of integration and difference reflect a set of power relations and consequential resistance which, like the national identities they help to define, are always in motion. These help to portray the ways in which all national identities are never entirely fixed but a process in motion. Sport plays its part, a very important part, in this process, but its role is partial and over-hyped at the expense of examining why the black athletes who represent Britain on the pitch, in the ring, or on the running track are not replicated in anything resembling equal numbers on Trade Union executives, or on the front benches, or on the committees that run sport’s governing bodies. Writer on race and sport Dan Burdsey provides a poignant and powerful observation of how the racialisation of sport is often experienced. Apart from the athletes on the track, “You will often see a significant presence of minority ethnic people in the stadium: they will be directing you to your seat or serving your refreshments. The racialised historical antecedents, and continuing legacy, of these roles – entertaining or serving the white folk – should not be lost within the contemporary clamour of positivity.” An Olympic Park built at the epicentre of three of Britain’s most multicultural boroughs which is experienced in this way will expose much of the inclusion and exclusion which persist in our society, or at least it should if anybody cares to notice.