What do we mean by success?

Tweet

The newspapers are full of praise for the athletes from the UK who took part in the Rio Olympics, and rightly so.  The performance of many of them was outstanding and deserving of the praise being heaped on the individuals concerned.  However, whilst assessing the success of individual athletes is comparatively straightforward, assessing the overall performance of countries is rather less so.

The Western Mail highlighted one aspect of that in this article on Saturday, pointing out that, on the basis of the population of Wales, the nation performed very well indeed, coming in second overall on the basis of medals per head.  It would not give an independent Wales a very high ranking in the official medal table, of course, but that merely highlights that countries with larger populations are likely to do better, overall, than countries with smaller population.  Having a lower position in the medal table takes away nothing from the successes of any of the individuals concerned.

But it is clear that, for some, the overall ranking is the more important measure.  On that basis, I saw another alternative table last week.  This one shows how, if the EU had competed as a single team, it would have overwhelmed all the other competing terms, finishing miles ahead of anyone else.  Again, calculating the rankings in this way takes away nothing from the successes of any of the individuals.

Reactions to both of the alternative tables have varied, inevitably, but what they demonstrate is that most people start out with a view about what is the ‘right’ basis for competing, and it seems unlikely that that preference is based solely on a desire to be seen as one of the worlds’s sporting superpowers.  There are more political factors at work here.

And that brings me to another point.  One alternative table that I’ve not yet seen (and I don’t know how easy it would be to produce) is a ranking based on the amount spent to win each medal.  If one were to be produced, I suspect that the UK would be quite a long way down in terms of value for money, with the team having a very high cost per medal.  There is clear evidence that targeted spending can and does produce results in terms of medals, if that’s what’s important.

At one level, that may not matter.  Any state is perfectly free to decide how much to invest in its sportsmen and women, and to set a target for how many Olympic medals it wishes to win as a result.  That’s more or less what John Major’s government did some years ago, and over time that focus has produced more medals.  It’s rather less clear, though, that it’s increased participation in sport; indeed, there is plenty of evidence that participation may be falling as facilities are closed or reduced in the light of spending cuts elsewhere.  Increasingly we have a well-funded elite and a poorly funded remainder, as a result of a deliberate act of government policy (and by successive governments of both colours).

It leads me to wonder whether the objective is more to do with ‘bread and circuses’ than any real concern for sporting prowess and performance.

Bigger and Browner

Tweet In his speech at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Gordon Brown appears to have managed to state the obvious without understanding the obvious conclusion to be drawn.  Referring to the successes of the UK’s team in the Olympic Games, he said:

“And the Olympics is pretty clear to us that, by the pooling of resources in, say, cycling, we managed to do what if you just divided the money and put a 10th to Scotland and a 10th to Yorkshire and so on you could not have achieved the same results.”

He also said:

"When we pool and share resources for the common good, it's often the case that the benefit is far greater than would have occurred if we'd just summed up and added up the parts.”

It’s impossible to argue with his logic, which basically amounts to saying that bigger countries can have access to a wider pool of talent and can choose to concentrate resources rather than spread them more thinly.  What it doesn’t say - but certainly implies – is that what happens to the parts isn’t important, only the overall total.

It’s basically the same as the economic policy followed by his Government – concentrate resources in the South East in ways which improve the overall average even if those on the periphery lose out, and call it success.

He’s not following it through to its natural conclusion though.  Just think about the pool of talent and the resources available if the EU were to combine and send a single team to the Olympics.  If you just want to measure ‘success’ in terms of a ranking in the medals tables, then bigger is almost always going to be better, isn’t it?

The reason that doesn’t occur to him is that he is, however rational and logical his position might appear to be, starting from a prejudiced view about what the ‘right’ unit is.

Oh, and by the way, why the ‘Edinburgh Book Festival’?  Wouldn’t it be a bigger and better event, able to call on more talent and ability, if it were renamed and held somewhere else?  Like London, perhaps…

More to the olympics than gold

Tweet

The opinion poll finding that most people in Wales think that the Olympics will be of no benefit to Wales is hardly a surprise.  It would be a bit like an opinion poll finding that the majority of people believe the world to be round.  Whilst there’s always a minority whose beliefs fly in the face of the objective evidence, most of us are willing to believe that which is factually evidenced.

More interesting though would have been the supplementary question which appears not to have been asked, and that is whether the UK should still be staging the Games regardless of the question of economic benefit.  There is a sort of assumption that ‘no benefit’ leads automatically to ‘don’t do’.  That doesn’t only apply to the Games, of course; but I’d challenge the assumption.

Part of the problem with the Games from the outset has been the UK Government’s obsession with trying to prove that they have a financial benefit, for the UK even if not for particular parts thereof.  But is that really the basis on which we should decide?  Certainly, there are questions about the way in which the expenditure has been treated; it is perverse that those elements of spending aimed at regenerating a particular area of London are counted as being ‘UK’ spend rather than local spend.  And there are major questions about whether staging the Games has become too big a commitment anyway as different hosts vie to outdo each other from one Games to the next.

But there is, or should be an underlying spirit to the Games.  Partly it’s about peaceful rivalry and competition between the athletes from different states, but even that seems to be a sometimes tribalistic divergence from the real spirit.  That is surely about the world’s best athletes, in a range of sports, coming together to challenge each other and compete.  Isn’t that worth doing anyway?  Most of the athletes are, I suspect, more interested in testing and proving their own prowess than in which flag they compete under; the flag is merely part of the route to the Games.

The whole event has become so big and so expensive that smaller countries in the world, such as Wales, could never dream of hosting it under current financing models.  That’s a pity; the world is so much bigger than merely the capital cities of the larger countries.  It would be more in the spirit of the Games themselves if all countries contributed an annual amount on a sliding scale to an international fund, enabling a cheaper event to be held in more places.  Who wouldn’t want to host the Games then?

Sport and Tribalism

Tweet Sport almost always seems to lead to a degree of tribalism (although tribalism expressed on the field of play always has to be better than tribalism expressed on the field of war). As the medal count increases, so the media start to take ever more interest in what 'our' athletes are doing in Beijing – and the headlines grow more jingoistic.

It is entirely natural for those of us who feel ourselves to be first and foremost Welsh to feel a degree of pride in the successes of our compatriots; and is just as natural that those who consider themselves to be first and foremost British feel the same pride towards the whole of the GB team.

Like other members of Plaid, I wish that Wales were competing as a nation in its own right; that Welsh athletes could be competing under the Ddraig Goch rather than under the Union Jack. And I know that there are some athletes who would themselves prefer to be competing for Wales rather than GB; and of course, doing well for their country is something that most athletes take pride in.

But it seems to me that the primary motivation of most Olympians is that they want to be the very best in the world in their chosen sport. That is what they train and work for, over many years, so that they reach their peak at the Games which mark the pinnacle of most sports.

Whilst all the athletes benefit from backup and support from trainers, sponsors and the rest, success in most Olympic sports is still very much an individual achievement on the day itself. I find myself wondering whether there isn't far too much stress being placed on the medal table, which artifically compares so many countries of diverse sizes and resources. It tends to focus attention on the country rather than on the individual athletes, of all countries. It is the individual athletes who have given of their best; and that level of endeavour is surely worthy of celebration in its own right.