Brian Rudman: Games' obscene costs must stop

NZHerald, 15 Sept 2010: The Queen has already decided to give the New Delhi Commonwealth Games a miss. And she has a pretty good excuse. At age 84, the last thing she needs is a dose of "Delhi belly" or Dengue fever. But what's this we read about the fittest and healthiest of athletes from the senior "white" nations of the Commonwealth wimping out because the shower fittings in the Games village aren't up to luxury hotel standards and nasty insects might bite them? Is this the spirit that painted a quarter of the globe red and created an empire on which the sun never set? Jesting aside, if the sports bosses from New Zealand, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom do recommend that the white Commonwealth stay home, more than just the Games are at stake. With the Queen and the Games being the only two glues holding this anachronistic collection of nations together, a walk-out by the old colonial master race, leading to the collapse of the Delhi Games, is likely to accelerate the unraveling of the whole post-imperial charade. 

And while harboring a certain nostalgic attachment to the club, if its demise were to hasten the day we cut the imperial apron strings and declared New Zealand a republic, then I'm certain I could get over the loss. The other positive if the Delhi Games were to collapse, overwhelmed by corruption, hubris and over-spending, is it might bring to an end the insane "arms race" between nationalist politicians who compete to build grander and grander temporary sporting megacities that end up beggaring their people for years to come. In Auckland recently, mayoral candidate John Banks fantasized about holding the Olympics here in 2020. Thankfully, he was laughed off the stage. So far, New Zealanders have got off relatively lightly regarding these sorts of flights of fancy. The bill for next year's Rugby World Cup is said to be a little north of $500 million. A bargain - if you ignore the population differences - compared with India's bill. The cost of the upcoming Delhi Games is more than $8 billion, according to one of the country's top businessmen, Azim Premji. In a Times of India article, the chairman of the giant Wipro software company denounced the cost, asking, "Is this drain on public funds for the greater common good?" He added: "Can we ignore this splurge the next time a malnourished child looks us in the eye?" The obscenity of this splurge is brought into sharp focus because of the abject poverty the Indian Government is trying to sweep out of sight and mind. But who wants to watch a glittering parade of athletes when we've seen live television reports of mobile courts, which pull up alongside a crippled beggar and drag her inside a converted courthouse on wheels, where a judge sits on a bench seat waiting to convict and imprison her for the duration of the Games, somewhere out of sight of the athletes and visitors.

 Earlier reports said 140,000 families were being evicted to make space for the lavish facilities being built for the games. Still, if the Indians can keep costs down to $8 billion that will be cheap, compared with the scandalous $12 billion bill that the impoverished people of South Africa now face following the soccer World Cup. King of the big spenders, though, was Beijing, which not only "sanitised" the city of the wrong sort of people before guests arrived for the 2008 Olympics but announced proudly its costs in the vicinity of $60 billion. But this figure also included four new subway lines, a high-speed rail link to a neighboring city and a vast new airport. Time after time, these sporting extravaganzas leave host cities and countries with a financial nightmare to cope with and a bunch of facilities they don't need. The 2004 Athens Games cost Greece nearly $20 billion - a huge debt burden - and left the city with 22 venues, most of which lie abandoned and unused. The citizens of Montreal finally paid off the last installment on their 1976 Olympics stadium this year. Nicknamed the "Big Owe", it ended up costing $2 billion and loses millions of dollars a year. New Zealand Commonwealth Games chief Dave Currie now says the old white Commonwealth "advance group" will report back from their inspection tour of New Delhi next week and will say "either it will be okay or we don't think this is viable". What isn't viable is the way sporting organisations and politicians alike continue to encourage and drive nations, rich and poor, into this crazy pattern of build, beggar and discard.
Source: NZHerald