I think your analysis of the statistics is flawed and lazy Brett.

You cannot compare a TV audience of 5.9 million for a specific moment in time, with attendance over a year or so at other activities. The audience for the Olympics is all at once.

Attendance to cinema, botanic gardens and ballet is over a year. This also includes, I suspect, many repeat attendees, so the actual audience is likley to comprise a lot less than the figures you suggest. The ballet would have many who go multiple times, as would the botainc gardens.

If you want to compare actuall attendance, perhaps you could use the number of attendees who go to commercial sporting events in the same calendar year, or conversely, the peak viewing on TV of various cultural events compared to sports.

You have to compare apples with apples.

There should be no subsidies to sporting clubs, no extraganzas like the Olympics unless they are privately funded, subsidising of athlete venues unless they are for general public participation or subsidising of elite athletes. An Institute of Sport that would encourage general participation in sport and clean living by those who participate in sports would be great.

Japan did not make the first hundred countries in one Olympics while Australia with a much smaller population was near the top in medals. Although I am critical of Japan in some ways I think they have placed sport in a more realistic position than Australia.

I think the subsidising and training of elite athletes by the current Institute of Sport while obese couch potatoes sit and watch them is ridiculous. When there is great money involved it is impossible to eliminate drugs. The current Olympics to a large extent have nothing to do with what I think sport should be. I think it should be play for the joy of the
participants.

Professional sports is a business. It is a business which I don't think should be subsidised in any way. I protested to my local postmaster that Australia Post had no business supporting the Olympics as the Olympics to a large extent is a training ground for future professional athletes.

Actually, I have enjoyed both participating in and watching sports, but I don't think it should be the business of government business.

I would like to see the Olympics permanently situated in Greece, confined to amateurs and not subsidised by government.

I was a little boy up in Lake Placid when they had the 1932 winter Olympics. Irving Jaffe, a skater, came up from NYC to participate. There was no Olympic village as there is today so he looked for a Jewish family to board with. I think he stayed with the Volperts. He won the 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters. Most events were free. My artist uncle was in charge of the designs on the ice for the figure skaters so I met Sonja Henie, the 1932 champion, and other figure skaters.

Uncle Harry ordered aquamarine which was a clear beautiful green as one of the colors for the ice. The supplier sent him ultramarine which was a muddy green. There was no time to exchange it so Sonja and the other skaters had to glide around on it.

John Shea and Hubert Stevens, local Lake Placid boys, won medals in bobsledding and skating. Then they went back to their regular jobs.

As I remember there was neither prejudice, glitz nor big money involved.

In 1936 there was the Nazi Olympics, and everything went downhill from there. The Nazis put on a show - introduced such glitzy stuff as the torch and emphasized nationalism. That garbage is still with us. The US had a great Jewish runner, Marty Glickman. Avery Brundidge, the chairman of the US Olympic Committee, was an antisemite who catered to the Nazi's sensibilities and kept Marty from going to Berlin. They substituted Jesse Owens, a black man who was apparently less offensive to the Nazis. Jesse Owens won several gold medals in that Olympics. Hitler didn't shake hands with him as he did with other winners.

The current Olympics encourages national rivalry. It does not replace war by sport. It carries the spirit of war into sport. It is an orgy of national chauvinism and commercialism in a win-at-all-cost atmosphere.

Well said david f.
The olympics has become a corrupt, elitist circus once every four years. The athletes are not amateurs and the whole ethic of the movement has shifted to superstars, megabucks and tawdry marketing opportunities.

We would be far better off to support grassroots sports and facilities and maybe reduce some of the disease and obesity brought on by our modern sedentary lifestyles. The big boys get more than enough from sponsorships and endorsements they dont need help from governments.

John Coates reaction when he thought he might be pulled off the gravy train was illuminating and struck me as one of the most childish tantrums I have seen in Australian public life for a long time. He should get together with rupert m. They are both deluding themselves that they have something of value and that we should all pay for their greatness.

What a precise comment by David f when he says:
"The current Olympics encourages national rivalry. It does not replace war by sport. It carries the spirit of war into sport. It is an orgy of national chauvinism and commercialism in a win-at-all-cost atmosphere."
That win at all cost attitude does not reflect competency on the part of players, merely boorish egotism.
I dislike sport intensely, because it has moved from being a personal attempt at striving for its own sake,joy, and excercise, to an attempt at status symbolism.
I'd be very happy if the government action on sports funding was "P.I.R.O." - piss it right off!

I think it was Ernest Hemingway who held the opinion that only mountain climbing, motor racing and bull-fighting deserved to be called sports. Everything else, said Ernest, is a game. I'm inclined to agree with the great man. The Olympics are games. Games organisations should have to support themselves.If the entertainment value is high enough then the gate receipts will have to fund their activities. John Coates and his crowd are very highly paid dole-bludgers. They are a luxury item that we could well do without. I don't see any change happening. There are too many vested interests and special pleaders. Politicians of all persuasians love the photo ops. It really is a low form of Nationalism.