DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Each G.B. Gold Medal will cost £10 million each.

**Quaganoca** · 09-01-2012, 05:41 AM

If you update the tables with the final medal tally it does make interesting reading.

Total £m £ per medal (m) Extra medals Extra (£m) Extra per medal (m)
2012 London 63 264 £4.19 15 30 2
2008 Beijing 48 234 £4.88 18 164 9
2004 Athens 30 70 £2.33 2 10 5
2000 Sydney 28 60 £2.14

I excluded tennis as the funding comes from elsewhere so based it on 63 medals. It also excludes any additional funding that popular and successful sports receive through personal sponsorship etc but since the UK Sport money is specifically targeted at medal performance it still has some relevance
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The average medal needs 4.2m in funding and with the exception of shooting no sport that received less than £4.5m delivered a medal at London 2012.

The most expensive medal was Hockey at £15m but that requires a whole team, not just an individual. Swimming clearly underperformed since it spent 8.4m per medal and missed its targets. Diving and Pentathlon spent around 6.5m per medal but certainly pentathlon can argue that there are 5 sports to train so it actually works out at good value on a sport by sport basis. It has also managed to deliver a medal in every Olympics since the women started competing and that is no mean feat when there are so many elements!

Once sports hit the higher medal numbers the cost per medal tends to fall below the average and this may be where personal or sport specific sponsorship is supplementing the UK sport/lottery funding and/or where depth of talent breeds confidence and further success.

It looks as though the total funding amount will be confirmed through the next cycle but that it will be targeted at those sports that hit their targets (and delivered medals). If so, fencing is one of the risk sports, especially as we have shown no real progress (let alone a medal). Perhaps we should argue that investment of less than £4m only produces flukes and that is more so in a sport with such a high skill level. Even with further structural changes simply sustaining the level of funding will probably only allow us to make progress towards a medal in Rio and we need higher funding to bring home a medal.

If our new organisation can deliver that, it really will have pulled off a significant achievement. If it does not perhaps we need to also radically re-think which weapons we can realistically support at any level.....and that would be a very tough decision.

09-01-2012, 05:41 AM	#12
Quaganoca Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 407 Senior Member	If you update the tables with the final medal tally it does make interesting reading. Total £m £ per medal (m) Extra medals Extra (£m) Extra per medal (m) 2012 London 63 264 £4.19 15 30 2 2008 Beijing 48 234 £4.88 18 164 9 2004 Athens 30 70 £2.33 2 10 5 2000 Sydney 28 60 £2.14 I excluded tennis as the funding comes from elsewhere so based it on 63 medals. It also excludes any additional funding that popular and successful sports receive through personal sponsorship etc but since the UK Sport money is specifically targeted at medal performance it still has some relevance Attachment 1021 The average medal needs 4.2m in funding and with the exception of shooting no sport that received less than £4.5m delivered a medal at London 2012. The most expensive medal was Hockey at £15m but that requires a whole team, not just an individual. Swimming clearly underperformed since it spent 8.4m per medal and missed its targets. Diving and Pentathlon spent around 6.5m per medal but certainly pentathlon can argue that there are 5 sports to train so it actually works out at good value on a sport by sport basis. It has also managed to deliver a medal in every Olympics since the women started competing and that is no mean feat when there are so many elements! Once sports hit the higher medal numbers the cost per medal tends to fall below the average and this may be where personal or sport specific sponsorship is supplementing the UK sport/lottery funding and/or where depth of talent breeds confidence and further success. It looks as though the total funding amount will be confirmed through the next cycle but that it will be targeted at those sports that hit their targets (and delivered medals). If so, fencing is one of the risk sports, especially as we have shown no real progress (let alone a medal). Perhaps we should argue that investment of less than £4m only produces flukes and that is more so in a sport with such a high skill level. Even with further structural changes simply sustaining the level of funding will probably only allow us to make progress towards a medal in Rio and we need higher funding to bring home a medal. If our new organisation can deliver that, it really will have pulled off a significant achievement. If it does not perhaps we need to also radically re-think which weapons we can realistically support at any level.....and that would be a very tough decision.
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