London Olympics legacy "a failure"?

Bry Nylon · Jul 6, 2015

According to Tessa Jowell.

Did London 2012 inspire a generation of children? My children were a bit young to be inspired by 2012 - although they quite enjoyed watching the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

easynow · Jul 6, 2015

What exactly was she expecting?

vegster · Jul 6, 2015

I think we have slipped back in to our old comfortable apathy, remember when wearing sporting gear such as Nike/Adidas was all the rage all you had to do was wear it ? We live in a country where, on daytime telly, they advertise a cream that can be used to prevent ones thighs chaffing together as they rub., that's our legacy.

Bry Nylon · Jul 6, 2015

Like I say, I didn't really get too involved with the Olympics, but the very best bit of the Commonwealth Games for me was watching the swimming on TV with my 4 year old daughter one evening:

Commentator: "Watch out for Wales in lane 5!"
Daughter: "Where Daddy? Where?"
Me: "What?"
Daughter: "Where are the whales?"

Prince Monolulu · Jul 6, 2015

Anyone truly surprised? Wet Sham won't be moaning though.

WhingForPresident · Jul 6, 2015

In terms of the facilities, some have come out alright. The Lee Valley Velodrome and white water centre are good facilities now open to the public, for instance, and there are some great new houses and facilities in the area that should hopefully get kids involved in sport and perhaps prevent them from being led astray.

Mind you, I doubt many people from outside London will feel they benefitted from us hosting the Games at all.

I don't agree at all with the way the Olympic Stadium has been handed over to West Ham with a shitload of taxpayers money behind it, but they had to get something in there to prevent it becoming a white elephant i suppose.

In terms of 'inspiring a generation', you simply cannot say it has, but then I don't think it was ever going to. It's a pretty broad statement that can't really be quantified anyway, but the majority of people in this country are far too ignorant and lazy to be inspired by anything except sob stories on X Factor and bullshit posts on Facebook about a dog dying of dysentry or something. Tis the modern way, unfortunately.

Guy Fawkes · Jul 6, 2015

Heard about this on the radio earlier today, someone countered (can't remember who they quoted) that there is (supposedly) an extra 1 million taking part in regular exercise a week (or i think it was a week) since the games.

(Sorry it's all a bit vague however i can't find the repeat of this online anywhere to be able to post about it in more detail)

goldstone · Jul 6, 2015

Typical government bullshit as they tried to justify the outrageous cost of the London olympics. Of course it was never going to inspire a generation of children. And the legacy was always very questionable. £272m to convert the olympic stadium for football, most paid for by the taxpayer? What a joke.

Bold Seagull · Jul 6, 2015

WhingForPresident said:
In terms of the facilities, some have come out alright. The Lee Valley Velodrome and white water centre are good facilities now open to the public, for instance, and there are some great new houses and facilities in the area that should hopefully get kids involved in sport and perhaps prevent them from being led astray.

Mind you, I doubt many people from outside London will feel they benefitted from us hosting the Games at all.

Well in terms of the velodrome, the North has had Manchester a lot longer, and I know cycling clubs from all over the South are booking monthly sessions at Lea Valley, so it is benefitting a lot of people in that specific regard.

beorhthelm · Jul 6, 2015

every olympics and world cup promises to leave a legacy, and every olympics and world cup manages to leave a legacy of fat debt and underused, white elephant buildings. due to the burden on all London council tax payers (yep still bitter about it) at least they paid for alot of it up front. and though its massivly expensive, at least the stadium will be used. so our legacy is to not have completly wasted all that spending. read about Brazil last week, apparently only one of their football stadiums is used enough to make it viable, the rest are struggling to get a few thouasand in, one used as a coach park, other essentially abandoned.

Gwylan · Jul 6, 2015

WhingForPresident said:
In terms of 'inspiring a generation', you simply cannot say it has, but then I don't think it was ever going to.

But there was an explicit statement by the government of the time that it would, it's this that Jowell is alluding to. There's a political dimension to this in that she uses it as an excuse to beat the previous government about the head, particularly as regarding Schools Sports Partnership.

If the government had something like "Well, we can't spend any more as Labour squandered all the money", we'd just put it down to the rough and tumble of politics but a spokesman said that the legacy worked as people were doing more exercise every week.

This seems strange to me: Jowell says that research shows that fewer kids are doing sport at school. And in another article on the BBC site, it talks about the big decline in people playing football and cricket, how fewer people are going swimming and a drop in people playing golf. There is an increase in cycling but not enough to counteract that lot - so where does the government get its figures from?

Big G · Jul 7, 2015

So just how long is her time limit on the term legacy actually mean!
The games itself was a total success for teamGB and the country. The facilities updated and built may take more than 4 years to produce the next bunch of athletes to match that success. But what a very drawn up argument to come out with by some idiotic politician purely looking to try and make something out of nothing!

ROSM · Jul 7, 2015

The definition of legacy in the Olympic bid was deliberately tight and covered future use of land, buildings and facilities as well as participation in sport.

In terms of the former, actually the London Olympics come out much much better than previous ones with perhaps the exception of Moscow and LA (LA reused many old venues)

In terms of participation, the 2010 government widened the definition and diluted the focus. They then reduced the funding.

That's the point here.

My two older children really enjoyed the Olympics and have progressed with their swimming (via lessons at a privately owned pool) and taken up karate via another privately run club.

They wanted to try a few other sports but no council run sessions were available and alongside football training there's a limit to how much sport we can fund each month

Gwylan · Jul 7, 2015

ROSM said:
That's the point here.

My two older children really enjoyed the Olympics and have progressed with their swimming (via lessons at a privately owned pool) and taken up karate via another privately run club.

They wanted to try a few other sports but no council run sessions were available and alongside football training there's a limit to how much sport we can fund each month

It's not good news for the future of sport in this country. The lack of school sport is going to have big repercussions for the future. And it's no good saying that the future is private sports clubs - apart from the cost of joining, there's the cost of equipment too - my kids both play softball cricket but I'm only buying gear for my son for next year as I just can't afford two lots of helmets, pads etc. My daughter plays rugby but that's £80 membership and another £100 for kit ... it all mounts up.

But even if you can afford it, there's a lack of facilities. I've mentioned before about trying to find a football team for my son but there aren't any in Brighton with any vacancies and my daughter has to go to Uckfield to play rugby as there are no girls teams any closer.

That's no sporting legacy to have

simmo · Jul 7, 2015

beorhthelm said:
every olympics and world cup promises to leave a legacy, and every olympics and world cup manages to leave a legacy of fat debt and underused, white elephant buildings. due to the burden on all London council tax payers (yep still bitter about it) at least they paid for alot of it up front. and though its massivly expensive, at least the stadium will be used. so our legacy is to not have completly wasted all that spending. read about Brazil last week, apparently only one of their football stadiums is used enough to make it viable, the rest are struggling to get a few thouasand in, one used as a coach park, other essentially abandoned.

Do you remember England's first game in the World Cup (v Italy) was in the amazon at Manaus? Well that stadium was built just for that tournament, there was no local team to use it after (also it wasn't even ready for the WC either, they had to paint the grass if you remember).

http://onlyagame.wbur.org/2014/11/22/arena-de-amazonia-world-cup

On a related point...do you think Qatar's stadiums for WC 2022 will have much of a legacy? :lol:

spring hall convert · Jul 7, 2015

"Legacy" is just a load of bollocks spouted by politicians on the take, whilst spending ludicrous sums of your money on making them look good. Seems like Jowell didn't get that memo, which confirms my suspicions about her. She's stupid and naive and if she gets the Labour Party candidacy for the mayoral election then Labour have even less chance than they currently do of getting in.

Pavilionaire · Jul 7, 2015

On balance I don't see any evidence to suggest that the legacy - in terms of participation or awareness of health / fitness - has been a failure. If anything, it is the opposite.

If my Facebook is anything to go by most men seem to be cycling and most women seem to be going on breast cancer fun runs. My daughter competed at a gymnastics competition the other week and the hall was packed out, my son has played 4 football tournaments recently and these have all been very well-attended.

Gwylan · Jul 7, 2015

Pavilionaire said:
On balance I don't see any evidence to suggest that the legacy - in terms of participation or awareness of health / fitness - has been a failure. If anything, it is the opposite.

"A Youth Sport Trust survey of 1,392 primary schools in 2013/14 found that the average number of minutes children spent taking part in PE in a typical week was 102 for Key Stage 1 and 114 for Key Stage 2.
This was down from 126 minutes for Key Stage 1 and 127 minutes for Key Stage 2 in the charity's 2009/10 survey."

Sports England's latest survey from earlier this year "The number of people participating regularly in sport is down, by 125,000 to 15.6m"

Mattywerewolf · Jul 7, 2015

Gwylan said:
"A Youth Sport Trust survey of 1,392 primary schools in 2013/14 found that the average number of minutes children spent taking part in PE in a typical week was 102 for Key Stage 1 and 114 for Key Stage 2.
This was down from 126 minutes for Key Stage 1 and 127 minutes for Key Stage 2 in the charity's 2009/10 survey."

Sports England's latest survey from earlier this year "The number of people participating regularly in sport is down, by 125,000 to 15.6m"

That assumes all sport is only played in school hours. The vast majority of Olympic sports aren't available in any schools but participation levels are up

GT49er · Jul 7, 2015

spring hall convert said:
"Legacy" is just a load of bollocks spouted by politicians on the take, whilst spending ludicrous sums of your money on making them look good. Seems like Jowell didn't get that memo, which confirms my suspicions about her. She's stupid and naive and if she gets the Labour Party candidacy for the mayoral election then Labour have even less chance than they currently do of getting in.

Heavily politically biased (faulty) logic there, methinks. ' "Legacy" is just a load of bollocks spouted by politicians on the take, whilst spending ludicrous sums of your money on making them look good' - I fully agree, and so obviously does Tessa Jowell. Far from 'not getting that memo', she obviously sees things how they are, and has gone for the jugular by telling the truth. Honesty, really.

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