Olympics, are they good value?

[Miss L Toe]

Am I the only one who feels that the millions spent on the Olympics is being spent in London, will provide local employment and re-generate the local area, but hardly improve sports facilities for the average person in the UK, whether young or old.
Professional sport is just that, and is elitist, just the image that we really want to move away from if we want to promote horse riding as part of an accessible, healthy, leisure industry.

 

[BonneMaman]

Personally, I am really pleased we have the Olympics coming here - the regeneration project is amazing, there will be sporting facilities left for all to use, the economic benefits from tourism will be good.

It will get loads of British kids interested in sports of all sorts and might actually get them to turn their xboxes off!

I am also really looking forward to the spectacle - if there is something the british can do well it is pomp and circumstance.

Roll on next summer!

 

[sarahw123]

Personally, I am really pleased we have the Olympics coming here - the regeneration project is amazing, there will be sporting facilities left for all to use, the economic benefits from tourism will be good.

It will get loads of British kids interested in sports of all sorts and might actually get them to turn their xboxes off!

I am also really looking forward to the spectacle - if there is something the british can do well it is pomp and circumstance.

Roll on next summer!

^^100% agree with BonneMaman

 

[azouria]

Hm, the amount of money being spent on something that really we can't afford does not sit too well with me, especially now they are talking about exceeding the budget. It feels like they promised a lot, and now it's actually happening it will be a big anticlimax.

However, i'm biased, as applying for £1000 worth of tickets I didn't get anything. Bit of a tangent but I do think that it's unfair that some people have gotten tickets for multiple events and others have got nothing.

 

[Miss L Toe]

I live in Scotland, we don't have any Olympic facilities near here, all the facilities we have have been provided either by local authorities [swimming pools] or private companies [Ingliston], Muirmill and others.
I assume people living in London will get an upgrade but to be honest, don't they already have the facilities?
http://www.gll.org/centre/crystal-palace-national-sports-centre.asp
http://www.thenec.co.uk/ for northeners!
I am not a spectator, so don't want to watch professional athletes running round a tartan track, I don't see the appeal.

 

[Faithkat]

I was surprised at the amount of NEW building that has gone on for the 2012 Olympics given that the Crystal Palace complex was (apparently) built to back up a previous bid. The facilties there might, perhaps, need a bit of an upgrade but that would have been considerably less than the God-knows-how-many-billion that have been spent so far by a country that is staggering on its economic uppers already. I also fail to understand why Wembey Stadium wasn't chosen as the Olympic Stadium. I have been told that it was because it doesn't have a running track but, surely to God, they could have laid one just for the Olympics or am I being a little simplistic?

My gripe is the amount of money being spent on the temporary equestrian facilities. Having the Olympics in London is wonderful opportunity to create a world-class equestrian legacy that would have enabled us to bid for events such as the WEG . . . but this has been discussed and debated elsewhere on this forum

I appreciate they are the LONDON Olympics but I do question the extra building of facilties somewhere which is already quite well catered for .