All that money for lousy five medals – why bother?
So Great Britain and Northern Ireland won a total of five medals at the Winter Olympics.
Only at a cost of around £5 million funding from the National Lottery each!
If you discount the medal won thanks to ‘crowd funding’ – because the funding for the two women bobsleigh event was cut off – then add a further £1 million to the average ‘cost’ per medal. How absolutely blooming stupid.
We’re not a place that has huge amounts of snow and ice for these athletes to practice on, and of the five medals won only one was a ‘gold’ for winning, the others were for finishing third. Not a very good return for the ‘investment’ of so much money.
I think 35 countries took part in these Olympics, less than a quarter of the countries that take part in the Summer Games, but still we managed one winner.
But really, couldn’t that money have been better invested in sports which have a higher take-up? Something like basketball? A sport that had its Olympic funding from the National Lottery withdrawn after ‘failing’ at the last Olympics!
It’s ridiculous that a sport like basketball should lose it’s funding when there are many more youngsters playing it than can even afford to get near a snow slope.
Yes, I’m an old cynic who was never good enough or big enough to represent my country on a sporting field, but why should we find the money to fund what are basically rich people’s sports?
M Gough
Wolverhampton
