Why are we paying for this American failure?

TO SEND the Great Britain team to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002 cost £2million. This year, in Pyeongchang, it is £32m. Totally worth it, according to former skeleton gold medallist Amy Williams, who fits right in on the BBC cheerleading team. ‘When you think of the wages football players get . . . ’ she mused. We can stop right there, however, because footballers earn their salaries from private companies, not the taxpayer. Alexis Sanchez receives his money from a company run by some very rich Americans, and then pays a significant percentage of it to our government in tax. What funds the Winter Olympics, in the main, is public money. So you pay, I pay, even Sanchez pays. That’s a big difference and Williams, who is not foolish, should recognise it. So what do we get for £32m? Well, medals. Lots and lots of lovely medals. Not as many as we hoped. Well, none at all so far — but throwing a small fortune at it appears to have got us a technological advantage in the skeleton again, so there is hope. Skeleton is much like cycling in the summer Games. It responds to money, as well as hard work and talent, and Team GB commands plenty of all three. This brings us to Annika Taylor. Who is she, you may ask, and with good reason. Taylor came 75th of 90 in the women’s 10km cross-country skiing yesterday, following on from 60th of 61 in the skiathlon. It could be said she has gone a little under the radar in Pyeongchang, although you’d know her if you heard her speak. She’s the American. Taylor has a British father, but was born in America, competed in America, went to school in America and remains based there, when she isn’t training in Norway, where a British athlete in her discipline has to go to get good at the sport. Having competed solely for American clubs in American events Taylor (right) was suddenly taken British, a country with no cross-country pedigree or domestic elite standard facilities, in 2013. Why abandon a nation with a reasonable winter sport infrastructure for one that has next to none? Well, on March 8, 2013, her final race of that season, Taylor came 33rd in an international field in an event at Rikert Tour Center, Vermont. Ahead of her were 18 Americans. Taylor was still a teenager at the time, but even so: do you think she would be at the Olympics had she stayed true to her birthplace of Truckee, California? Now, we can debate the merits of skeleton glory, of funding speed skaters and snowboarders and athletes whose wonder is that they are doing it at all. American ringers paid to come 75th, however, may be stretching it a little. Even as Sanchez banks another million, he might resent paying for that.