What will be the legacy of the Rio Games

As it emerges each of the 67 medals won by Team GB at the Rio Games cost £4.1m in funding over the past four years, should future funding target elite or grassroots sport? Michael Alexander and Jack McKeown speak to experts for and against

When it comes to Olympic medals some folk know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

The actual cost to the taxpayer according to the Sport Industry Research Centre, of Team GB’s record haul of 67 medals in Rio, is actually £1.09 per person per year, or the cost of a bus fare into town.

With two thirds of the funding coming from the lottery, which is a voluntary purchase by members of the public, the actual cost to the taxpayer is buttons. The value in terms of role models and inspirational feelgood factor is priceless.

The debate is polarised between whether elite athletes should be funded or grassroots should be given the money, but it’s a false argument. It’s like love and marriage, you can’t have one without the other.

There is a base and a pyramid and we need both. The base provides the elite sports stars after all. Most cyclists and club runners and sports folk will never become Olympians, but they will train on the same tracks and gyms and velodrome’s as the top stars, and they’ll push themselves to their very limits to be the very best they can be.

In so doing they will find camaraderie and friendships which will last a lifetime and sustain them in their sporting endeavours which will keep them fit and healthy both physically and mentally.

In doing all of that they can aspire to being a Usain Bolt or a Laura Trott while in all probability never ever coming close. It’s the taking part that’s important: that and the benefits which society reaps in producing grounded, rounded and healthy individuals.

Sport is a metaphor for life: you get out by and large what you put in. It’s much better in my view to have a generation inspired to run, jump, cycle and throw, than store up a mass of future health problems through inactivity and obesity.

That’s why we should not be quibbling about money spent on the elite, but should be spending even more in schools and sports clubs than we are at present on physical activity.

The paltry cost of Olympic medals will seem a drop in the ocean to the alternative of a society in which serious issues with drink, drugs and couch potato lifestyle choices will cost more than we can ever afford in physical, emotional and monetary terms. Jim Spence is a Scottish sports broadcaster from Dundee. A Courier columnist, he is a fan of Dundee United FC and joined the club in May as a consultant.

sport is a metaphor for life: you get out by and large what you put in

Jim Spence says we should not be quibbling about money spent.