To an outsider, the bickering over money between the sparring organising factions of the London Olympics is unseemly, unnecessary and appears to boil down to satisfying the vested interests of individuals over the good of the 2012 Games and Great Britain’s athletes.
And a bemused public, who would rather be getting excited about buying tickets to the Games when the ballot opens on Tuesday than hearing about warring Olympic acronyms, would be right to think that.
But, as ever, given the alphabet-soup administration of British sport, the real picture is more complicated.
In going to court to settle a financial dispute over the share of the Games’ (theoretical) profits, the British Olympic Association (BOA) has adopted an aggressive stance that has further isolated its chairman, Lord Moynihan, from colleagues overseeing preparations for the Games.
Indeed, Moynihan’s fellow Olympic board members, Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, and Lord Coe, the chairman of Locog, the London 2012 organising committee, are co-respondents in the case to be heard at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
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Being embroiled in a legal row with half your board is hardly an ideal state of affairs 15 months before the biggest moment in your organisation’s history, but it is no surprise.
London has held it together longer than most host cities but, in the end, the huge sums at play around the one-off commercial opportunity of an Olympic Games have almost inevitably brought about this squabble.
There is little sympathy for the BOA’s position in light of its internal financial situation, which is precarious after it embarked on an ambitious expansion programme without the committed revenues to cover it.
But there are two reasons why this matters beyond the usual tit-for-tat politicking that characterises Olympic sport.
The first is that there is a £4 million hole in the BOA’s budget for the management of Team GB next summer if the full complement of 550 athletes plus 450 support staff goes to the Games. And as the BOA’s allocation of automatic host-nation qualification places comes thick and fast, with the water polo players being welcomed yesterday and basketball learning its fate from the international federation tomorrow, a full complement is looking likely.
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So, indirectly, this legal dispute could have a detrimental impact on 2012 athletes, although the issues of the BOA’s finances and the Games’ operational cash surplus are distinct.
This is because the BOA’s inability to cover the cost of its core function is driving its pursuit of a greater share of the 2012 spoils. In dressing up its claim as a nobler mission — the commercial return of the London Games to British sport — it has at least drawn attention to a wider question. That is, if the Games do turn a profit, and that is moot, who gets the money designated for “grassroots sport”?
Under a contractual formula agreed in 2004, 60 per cent of any cash surplus is returned in the direction of this loose definition, with 20 per cent going directly to the BOA and 20 per cent to the IOC.
No one has addressed how this pot of money — in the event of a profit — would be distributed. The BOA clearly has its eye on administering it in the manner of previous host national Olympic committees after a Games.
But UK Sport, as the channel for public funds to elite athletes, and Sport England, the grassroots funding agency, would both have something to say about the BOA duplicating their grant distribution systems that will continue after 2012 with committed central funds from the lottery.
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Meanwhile, the Government is also coveting a share as a way of repaying a small fraction of the many billions of pounds the Exchequer has invested in the Games during a recession.
It all amounts to a landgrab of diminishing returns that does not bode well for British sport after 2012. If it is not resolved, this power struggle will not only overshadow the London Games but also Britain’s preparations for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, too. And that is one legacy that sport could do without.
Switch puts Betfair at odds with rulemakers
Betfair’s decision to move its operations offshore could not have been more starkly timed just a week after Jacques Rogge, the president of the IOC, warned that there was “no safe haven” for sport against the scourge of illegal betting.
Horseracing officials, who have fought in vain to maintain contributions from bookmakers to the Levy, point out that Betfair will be moving outside the British licensing system.
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Under the Gambling Commission, a condition of the licence requires Betfair to share information with the IOC and sports governing bodies if they spot any irregular betting patterns. A move to Gibraltar would make this voluntary only 15 months before the Olympics, leaving Games-related bets in the UK beyond the protection of legislation.
While sport awaits the outcome of a government consultation to close this loophole, some are arguing that the betting integrity movement has taken a step back at a crucial time.
Athletes conman jailed
A Croydon conman who duped elite athletes, including Mark Lewis-Francis, the British sprinter, into believing he could secure them lucrative sponsorship deals and perks such as luxury cars, has been sentenced to three years in jail for fraud. Mark Cas, whose Global Sponsorship Group falsely claimed it had £35 million pledged by blue-chip companies, preyed on athletes who had lost lottery funding.
Andy Turner, the hurdler, was too suspicious to hand over a fee. He said: “No one in athletics comes to you offering to pay you £50,000 and saying, ‘What Audi do you want?’ ”
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The scam was eventually uncovered via alerts on Twitter and Facebook, followed up by the news agency, Sportsbeat.
Pistorius edges closer
Oscar Pistorius, the South Africa Paralympic sprinter, has revealed that he is just 4½ inches short of his goal of competing in the 400 metres.
The “Blade Runner” is hoping to improve on his personal best, which is seven hundredths of a second off the Olympic qualifying time. “If you look at the time I’ve been running, it’s about 11cm [4½in] that I need to cover in the same time in the 400 metres,” he said. “It is that close.” Pistorius went to court three years ago to win the right to compete against able-bodied athletes on his carbon-fibre artificial legs.
503 days to go Points scored by Karl Roderer, of Switzerland, to win shooting’s free pistol event at the Paris Games in 1900