OCD me and the Olympics

The 2012 Olympics has come and gone.

Being a bit OCD I did some google work, cut and paste a few things, and tried to make some sense of the information that’s available, I wanted to know, and found out;

• Numbers of Competitors – 10,720
• Number of Countries that won medals – 84
• Countries Competing – 205

For New Zealand it’s reported we sent 184 Athletes, with 123 officials to this olympics, which isn’t so bad, it means that 1 in 14 athletes came home with a medal of some kind  or a better than 7% return Athletes to Medals. The USA managed a 1 in 5 return (of course this number is a bit off because of multiple medal winners such as Phelps for instance).

I was mot intrigued by the numbers of officials to competitors, things like the equestrian team need a high ratio of grooms and preparation staff, the football – who knows, it’s very technical these days, and the numbers soon mount out.

And Funding:

Since 2009, New Zealand’s elite men’s and women’s hockey programmes have been given $7,144,571 in public money. Funding in 2012 went up $1.52 million from the previous year. For instance. IT’s easy to equate the 1.5 million a year over two teams to be the money players get, I would think that after the various fees for gym and facility use, travel and accommodation, professional coaches and sundry doughnutters get their slice there isn’t a whole lot let over for extravagance, although you’d wonder about weekend retreats in the country for team-building and conditioning. #justsaying

New Zealand rowing, for instance got $19.2 million over four years

In an astonishing statement of self aggrandisement Sarah Harris, the high-performance director for Equestrian Sport New Zealand, said her organisation had asked for an extra $1 million a year on top of its current $1.2 million. She would not hesitate to accept if the freeze meant the extra money came from another sport, saying some sports were underperforming.

Which I found a bit distasteful and mocking of other athletes, she doesn’t name them of course, but inflates the value of an elitist sports event.

Also somewhat astonishing are the six sports Sport NZ currently target;   rowing, cycling, triathlon, sailing, swimming and track and field, and the relative success of each of those this time up.

All is not woe for the athletes though

“Our gold medal-winning rowers will pick up $60,000 each before tax, and silver and bronze winners get  $55,000 each. The payouts go down to $20,000 for a 16th place, with Nick Willis to receive $25,000 for his 9th place yesterday.

Athletes in team events – deemed to be more than eight members – will get from $20,000 each for eighth place to $35,000 each for winning gold.

The Kiwis’ performance pay is among the highest in the world – two to three times more than that offered to Australian and American athletes.

The Performance Enhancement Grants (PEGs) are taxpayer-funded, handed out by High Performance Sport New Zealand – a branch of Sport New Zealand, the agency tasked with generating international sporting success.

The individual amounts are: Gold: $60,000 / Silver or bronze: $55,000 / 4th-6th: $47,500 / 7th-8th: $40,000 / 9th-12th: $25,000 / 13th-16th: $20,000″”

So the tables are as follows;

And for every country there are results, or lack of

Related articles

• Olympic success comes at a price (3news.co.nz)
• Olympic heroes face cash freeze (nzherald.co.nz)
• High performance funding hiked – McCully (stuff.co.nz)
• Sports funding hiked – Government (stuff.co.nz)