The Olympic 2012 Farce (Part1)

Building athletics stadia and surrounding infrastructure for a one-off event at a cost of £9Bn is about the most ridiculous thing one could imagine - the original estimate was £2Bn! There can be no ‘lasting legacy’ from these games because athletics simply doesn’t matter to enough people in the UK. Hosting the Olympics is a whim, a fancy, a vanity project for national and local politicians.

When looked at in this light, the misguided premise, the lack of a business case, the stratospheric overspend and the lack of a credible ‘exit’ plan all contribute to the mother of all c**k-ups – at taxpayers’ expense.

This is a scandal of the largest proportions and those involved in its inception, authorisation and implementation should be brought to task. We took politicians to court for fiddling expenses, how can this scandal slip under the radar? Many people involved in this farce knew from the outset that a budget of £2Bn was simply too little but the vanity and lack of commercial necessity meant it simply didn’t matter to them - someone else would be picking up the bill! As a sense check there are many examples of how much previous Olympics have cost to stage so how could the real cost of the Olympic games have been under-estimated by almost 5 TIMES! It is truly scandalous!

Now that my spleen is well and truly vented, my next post focusses on the more positive theme of how to create a true lasting legacy for UK athletics.