Here is a link to an interesting article. Its not too long and pretty easy to read. Which also usually means it's left out a lot of info. I should provide a good discussion starting point anyway.

The basic gist is how much medals cost us as a nation to procure, could this money have been better spent elsewhere, what other nations have done with sport budgets.

For a total of ?$550 mil. Well for my $26.20, I'd rather it was spent elsewhere. Somewhere trivial like hospitals, schools, veteran care, you know, stuoid things like that.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/opinion/rice-was-nice-but-lets-think-twice-...

Sprintcyclist wrote on Aug 27^th, 2008 at 10:59am:


Mate, I agree with this completely. Rather than it being an activity, that people can casually enjoy. I think there are a number of interesting programs but they may need to have support for a number of years to allow these activities to sink in as lifestyle choices.


Sprintcyclist wrote on Aug 27^th, 2008 at 10:59am:


But isn't that a good thing? I admire the fact that these things (gold medals) seem to hold such little value to the muslim world. There may be other reasons for this lack of interest of course. Lack of the same amount of liesure time to watch or participate in sports, the technology (TV) is not as abundant etc, and most obviously lack of will to waste huge amounts of money on multi-billion $$ facilities when health and education are more important issues.

I also wonder, do these athletes have a HEX system like the academic student, that needs to be paid back?