This sporting life

Will the 2012 Olympics make us healthier as a nation? No chance—we'll have to get on our bikes and do it ourselves. Plus, what Manchester City tells us about capitalism
October 24, 2008
Man City melts into air

For a while it looked as if Manchester City was to become a mere vehicle for the global rebranding of one royal faction in a Gulf micro-kingdom. But its true fate—to have its rich histories and meanings diluted into the basis of a uniquely anodyne brand—became clear when the club's new owners, the Abu Dhabi United Group, recited their intention to turn Manchester City into "the Virgin of Asia and the world," a mantra written by the club's chief executive. Alongside the predictable deluge of transfer expenditures, we can expect the launch of CITYcola, CITYcars and CITYcards.

Thus a club whose character was defined by a sense of local authenticity—as opposed to the parvenus at United—will serve as the iconic sporting trophy of a middle eastern state; and a collective identity tied to a memory of solidarity and gallows humour in the face of repeated disaster will serve as the cipher for the fripperies and trappings of a bland global consumer culture. Capitalism is truly alchemical. Some might even think it poisonous.

Faster, higher, stronger—fitter?

As the last digitally engineered fireworks died away over the Bird's Nest stadium, the implications for London 2012 became clear. The Beijing Olympics were extraordinary but unrepeatable. Britain's double-decker bus tableaux at the closing ceremony with Leona Lewis, Jimmy Page and David Beckham paid homage to the nation's embrace of celebrity, stadium rock and football. But it also announced that the economics of grandeur and the theatre of bombast are to be exchanged for the pleasures of austerity and irony. Budgets will be trimmed, the opening ceremony may be dispensed with and the message will be left understated. While Beijing's mayor offered us the gargantuan vacuity of "One World. One Dream," London's mayor quipped, "ping pong is coming home."

There is one irony on which the organisers of 2012 might want to pass. Since London was awarded the Olympics, in part on the promise of raising levels of participation in sport and thus improving the health of the nation, Londoners have been exercising even less than they already were. The national picture is largely the same. Britons don't exercise or play sports enough. We pay for this in ill health and the enormous costs of dealing with it. Only a fifth of us are doing the suggested amount of 30 minutes of moderate exercise three times a week. 60 per cent of us do virtually nothing. The 2012 Olympics, we are repeatedly informed, are going to change all this.

But they won't. Neither the games themselves nor the nation's health can be helped by politicians or sportspeople claiming that there is a demonstrable link between elite sporting success at the Olympics (or anywhere else) and overall levels of participation in sport and exercise. (For more on this, see Fred Coalter's chapter in the 2004 IPPR pamphlet "After the Gold Rush.")

Consider the most successful Olympic nations. In China, the vast majority of the population take their back-breaking exercise in the fields and on the production lines. The collective girth of Americans grows by the minute. And in Russia, life expectancy has been in free fall for over a decade. In fact, top of the mass participation tables for sport are Finland, Sweden and Denmark, where over half the population gets their proper dose of exercise, where health indicators are significantly better, and where no Olympics has been held for over half a century.

The high GDP per capita and the egalitarian health and education systems of these Scandinavian nations help, but all three have taken further steps to boost exercise levels among their populations. Britain could do worse than follow their example. First, of course, we should spend more money. The Finns, for example, spend almost double what we spend on sport per capita. Second, and more importantly, we should devote some of this money to persuading people to make exercise part of their everyday routines. In Scandinavia, huge investments have been made to encourage people to cycle and walk.

Third, if we want more health bang for our sports buck, we should stop obsessing about the young and spend some money and time on the elderly, who exercise the least and who would benefit the most from a small increase in activity. And finally, as the Scandinavians have done, we should get women to participate at the same rate as men. In Britain, young women between the ages of 16 and 24 are half as likely to exercise as their male peers. Spending the same amount of money on women's sport as on men's would be a good place to start. The Women's Sports and Fitness Foundation recently estimated that only a third of public expenditure on sport in Britain benefits women.

If the government and the sports establishment are serious about public health, they should take these steps and stop making false claims about what the Olympics can achieve. After all, perhaps the most important way for London 2012 to differentiate itself from Beijing 2008 would be to opt, on difficult and contentious subjects, for candour rather than silence or obfuscation.