After a summer of sport, Richard Morrison asks why being 'elite' has positive connotations on the field but is seen as exclusionary in the arts.
After any good party some mug has to foot the bill. So with the Olympics. No sooner had that big gold creepy figure brought the Games to a close... than the bill for Team GB was made public. And I don’t think mine was the only jaw to drop when it was revealed that preparing Britain’s athletes for Paris cost £245.8 million in government and lottery funding.
Put brutally, that’s £3.78 million for each of the 65 medals Team GB won. Put even more brutally, it cost an average of £17.5 million in public funding to produce each of our 14 outright winners.
Well, you are reading this in the arts section not the sport section, so you may guess the provocative question that’s coming next... Keep reading on The Times.
After any good party some mug has to foot the bill. So with the Olympics. No sooner had that big gold creepy figure brought the Games to a close... than the bill for Team GB was made public. And I don’t think mine was the only jaw to drop when it was revealed that preparing Britain’s athletes for Paris cost £245.8 million in government and lottery funding.
Put brutally, that’s £3.78 million for each of the 65 medals Team GB won. Put even more brutally, it cost an average of £17.5 million in public funding to produce each of our 14 outright winners.
Well, you are reading this in the arts section not the sport section, so you may guess the provocative question that’s coming next... Keep reading on The Times.