The Road to 2012

But when the British Olympic Association says it wants any share it may receive from the profits of hosting London 2012 to exclude the cost of hosting the Paralympics – it’s turning downright disgraceful.

The British have for centuries prided themselves on having a good sense of fair play and decency.

But the BOA is single-handedly making a very good fist of turning that description on its head, and consigning it to history.

Welcome to the world of the BOA, where the idea of “sport for all” is far too costly an exercise. It seems the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hop-onto the all-conquering Olympic gravy-train is too good to miss – even if it could signal the beginning of the end for the Paralympics as we know it.   

I witnessed both the 2000 Olympics and Paralympics in Sydney. The events were remarkable in different ways. But it brought home to me the fact that the modern Olympics have well and truly lost their aura of “amateurism”. It’s really the Paralympics that are far closer to the ordinary person on the street. And arguably, it’s the Paralympics that are perhaps more worthy of our cheers than the Olympics.

Ironic Twist

In the bitterest of ironies, Britain happens to be the birthplace of the Paralympics. Stoke Mandeville Hospital, on the outskirts of London, hosted the first ever games for rehabilitating soldiers three years after the end of WW2.

The modern Paralympics grew from these games held the same day as the opening of the 1948 London Olympics. I wonder what those 16 paralysed ex-servicemen who took part would make of BOA chief Colin Moynihans’ uncompromising stance over the cost of staging the 2012 London Paralympics.

And the BOA’s position isn’t budging despite claims by the President of the International Paralympics Committee that the 2012 Paralympics will pay for themselves.

Court Action

So apparently desperate is the BOA to avoid what it sees as the horrific scenario that the Paralympics could eat into its precious profit share, that it's taking the London 2012 Organisers to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Lord Coe, the London 2012 Chairman, admitted to finding the whole affair “depressing” and that the vision of hosting a successful Olympics and Paralympics had now “mutated” into something far removed from that which London won the rights to almost six years ago in Singapore.

“Fair Play”? “Decency”? When I think of the BOA from now on, I shall be thinking more along the lines of “Short-sighted, petty-minded, pig-headed and greedy.”