Onime No Kyo
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quote:
VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria will no longer support "Olympic tourists", the country's sports minister has said, promising a major shake-up of state support for competitors after the country failed to win a summer Olympic Games medal for the first time in half a century.
Legislation to be crafted this year would ensure aid focused on popular Olympic sports rather than continuing a "watering can" approach that sprinkled money across the athletic spectrum, Norbert Darabos told the Kurier newspaper.
"The new law on promoting sports should ensure that Austria no longer produces Olympic tourists," added Darabos, saying he was fed up with athletes who had performed poorly gushing about the atmosphere at the London Games.
Austria sent 70 athletes to compete in 21 sports at London 2012 but, for the first time since the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, failed to win any medals.
"We have to change the structures in time so that we can win medals in Rio in 2016, or else we will again be on the same level as Luxembourg. They won't win anything in London either," Darabos was quoted as saying in an interview printed on Friday.
Mountainous Austria fares far better at winter sports and took home 16 medals, including four golds, from the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
<rant>
So this is a very interesting conundrum. Hopefully it doesnt cross the line into politics.
To my understanding, the Olympics were originally conceived as a contest of amateurs. It got to it's current state because countries kept pushing the envelope in order to get their best into the events even if they no longer fit the amateur category. I say "current state" because the resistance to David Stern's proposal to return the Olympic basketball tourney into a 23 and under contest baffles me. Frankly, watching the various Dream Teams beat the snot out of every other country (despite a smattering of fellow NBAers here and there) has gotten very old very quickly for me and I no longer enjoy watching these games. Olympic soccer, in my opinion is far more enjoyable for the precise reason that its not the same old cast of characters doing the same thing they do the rest of the year. It allows younger guys to get into the spotlight and represent their country, instead of trotting out overpaid, overexposed pros who are too rich to really give a fig one way or the other. So to me the equation in simple. You turn pro, you dont go to the Olympics.
Now, getting back to the Austrians. Very few people can afford to be amateur athletes, by which I mean hold a regular 8-5 job, support yourself and your family and still have enough time and money to train to a level required on the world level. So some assistance is obviously required here. In the old Soviet Union there was a system of government sport programs. If an individual showed promise (as determined by government coaches and scouts) he was given perks such as additional vacation time from his job in order to attend training and sports camps, etc which were paid for by the government. It was a solid support network for amateur athletes which appears to have been fairly successful as the USSR had racked up quite a nice tally of medals. This is no longer the case in Russia and the results are equally evident.
In western countries it seems to be much more about the support network. Gabby Douglas' family, as I understand, made enormous sacrifices to allow her to train. Some others have enough personal wealth to be able to afford it, etc. (Edit: Others get college sports scholarships and access to very good training facilities, which in my opinion is also fair since their primary task there is to get an education and sports are, at least in theory, secondary.)
So what Austria seems to really be saying is either "if youre not good enough to win medals, we dont care for you to represent our country", which is both contrary to the Olympic spirit and pretty stupid, or that "we dont have the money to support everyone" which is fair but seems to be pointing towards the old USSR model, in which case you are wedding yourself to being much more responsible for failure if the athletes you hand-pick and train at the taxpayer's expense dont do very well. You also stand a very good chance of missing genuine talent because any government bureaucracy is ponderous and unfair, especially when it comes to dividing handouts.
The bottom line for me is, the Olympics have gotten very far away from the ideals that I think they were supposed to have. They are now much more of a commercial spectacle than a good-will contest between regular people who have a passion for a particular sport.
Ok, I feel better now. </rant>
< Message edited by Onime No Kyo -- 8/10/2012 2:56:25 PM >
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