XXX Olympiad- Day 18

Well, I’m almost sure you’re not up to watch Taekwondo.

C’mon, sing along.  You know you want to.

Broadcast Schedule

All this is sourced through the NBC Olympics broadcast schedule.  Last  Day of competition starts at 6 am tomorrow.  

Competitions designated by (Medal) will award winners that day.  ‘all’ means not specified.  Sometimes NBC especially does mashups and doesn’t include event or competitor information.  Elimination means no round robin, one and done.

These schedules are a place for you to make sure you don’t miss a sport you like and share your observations.  Have fun today!

Olympic losers – the misery of past hosts

Lee Wellings, Al Jazeera

August 6, 2012

The most senior Australian member of the International Olympic Committee, former Olympian Kevin Gosper has said the failure to win gold medals results from cuts to government funding of Olympic sports in 2009.

‘You’ve got to put money in there. That pays for coaches, it pays for international competition. It’s the difference between gold and silver.’

But Australia are not the only nation suffering funding cuts in these austere times.

Spain’s Olympics so far has been grim – 39th in the medal table at the time of writing. I’ve seen and spoken to Spanish supporters in the Olympic Park and spirits remain high amongst people whose football team dominate the world.

At these Olympics their football team was eliminated without scoring a goal – summing up their first 10 days at the Games where no golds and just three medals came their way.

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Which brings us to Greece. Hosts eight years ago they have just two bronzes to show for their efforts so far and are out of the top 50 in the medals table. They brought a team weakened to just over 100 members by the crippling economic problems and their modest performances are completely unsurprising.

So bad were their finances after the Athens games that the IOC have had to acknowledge the part of the Olympics in their demise. They told me the problems in Greece are less than two per cent because of them hosting. Less than two per cent of Greece’s debt amounts to a big problem.

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Greece, Spain, Australia. Three of the last five Olympic hosts with one gold between them.

It’s a warning to governments in any host nation from Britain to Brazil.

The Elusive Economic Lift of the Olympics

By JOSHUA MILLS, The New York Times

August 10, 2012

Playing host to the Olympics rarely turns out to be an economic benefit for a country or city, and sports economists have convincingly documented how silly the expectations sometimes are, as Nick Watanabe of the University of Missouri did with regard to the London Games (“Yeah, so if we don’t include costs, there is a profit”).

Part of the faulty calculation is a disposition to focus on revenue and ignore many of the costs – particularly the indirect ones, needed to address increases in traffic and thus pollution; crime, littering and so on.

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When the Bloomberg administration was pushing hard for New York City to get the 2012 Games, it insisted that a new Olympic stadium would need to be built on Manhattan’s West Side – despite the presence in the metro area of three major stadiums. It also wanted to build a multimillion-dollar equestrian arena on Staten Island (which would be used for what after the Olympics?) despite the presence of Belmont and three other horse-racing tracks.

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Chicago, with the enthusiastic support of Barack Obama, pushed for the 2016 Olympics, and its officials said a new Olympic stadium was needed, despite two major-league baseball stadiums and Soldier Field, a football stadium (home of the Chicago Bears) that was recently renovated.

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Another piece of the faulty calculation of Olympic benefits is they often fail to acknowledge the displacement of other economic activity. The Greek government and Greek businesses invested billions of dollars to hold the 2004 Games – and while they drew full houses, tourism in Greece was down for the year, because so many people stayed away and many promised improvements were never made (though Athens did gain a much-needed subway system).

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In effect, rather than creating new economic activity, spending is shifted from one segment to another. Sports economists have been documenting this for decades.

And that’s to say nothing of the cost overruns that come with almost every major construction project and the upkeep needed in subsequent years to keep athletics facilities clean, safe and functional. Sydney is spending millions each year. The wonderful velodrome built in London will undoubtedly be used by cyclists – but how many and how often and at what cost?

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As public schools are increasing class sizes and dropping music and arts programs, firehouses are being closed and infrastructure is failing, how does being the host of the Olympic Games makes economic sense?