The Winter Olympics in Vancouver begins this weekend, snow permitting. They haven’t had enough of the stuff apparently, so are shipping it down from the tops of mountains in lorries. This is one of those Sod’s Law scenarios as a friend from Vancouver reckons they were skiing there in June last year.
Not that this should trouble the Great Britain team greatly, as the way their finances are going it is highly unlikely they will soon be able to afford skis, let alone the rest of the paraphernalia for winter sports. Sprinting down the side of a verdant mountain slope in nothing more expensive than a set of old trainers and camping shorts could in fact be the way forward for our Olympic competitors. You never know, we might even win a medal this time.
Snowsport GB, the national body for skiing in Britain, went into administration at the start of the week after the government denied it £200,000 in emergency backing. The debts of the organisation stood at £600,000, blamed on funding cuts, the increased cost of competing and training abroad and problems attracting sponsorship in a harsh economic climate. Skiers usually travel to the southern hemisphere for training during the European summer, but that essential was suspended this year. Chemmy Alcott, the only British female competing at World Cup level, funded her own training programme, while Zoe Gillings, a snowboard medal hope, spent just four days on snow through the summer months. There has always been a disparity in the funding for winter sports. The Olympic disciplines receive £400m in a four-year cycle, of which winter sports take just £6.5m.
And this is merely the beginning. It passed unnoticed in the furore around the Ashes returning to terrestrial television, but when David Davies presented his report on which sports events constituted the crown jewels and had to be made available to the public via a national broadcasting network, he as good killed winter sports in this country. He ended the BBC’s commitment to the Winter Olympics.
Fifteen sports, 90 events, 17 days, is the BBC boast from Vancouver 2010, and hours of television that I won’t be watching is the response from most of the public. But you’re wrong. You do watch the Winter Olympics. We all do. And, because British success is so rare, when it goes right over there, it breaks as huge news over here. Some of the most enduring sports stories of recent times, ones that dominated front and back pages and gave us household names, came courtesy of the Winter Olympics. Think Torvill and Dean, Eddie the Eagle, John Curry and Robin Cousins, think staying up past midnight to watch the curling. Would you remember these people, or these moments, had they been consigned to some satellite ghetto such as Eurosport, which is where most winter activity resides, until the Olympics come around?
If Snowsport GB found it tough now, in Olympic year, imagine what it will be like once winter sports disappear from the BBC? The money will dry up, the sponsors will walk away, interest will dwindle and, with it, government support. The Olympic coverage was payback time for those investing in our athletes. Now, they might as well all jump off a mountain.