Olympics opening ceremony

Much better getting behind a load of footballers eh Ken ?? But lets not talk about their wages and benefits.....a whole different story :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

I'm very happy to talk about footballers' wages including those representing us in the Olympics. Tina I am 100 per cent against the obscene wages footballers receive ( nearly said earnt). I don't care what the sport is - no one should be getting that kind of money. :-*

Quote:

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Originally Posted by monday21

Sorry in advance Graeme, It was my intention to keep my rose-tinted glasses on during the games and pretend all the roses in the garden are rosy. IMHO however, there are too many people trying to portray these games as the working class kid who sacrificed everything for four years and came good.

I don’t wish to undermine our athletes, merely redress the balance with the aim of achieving a sense of perspective. “Benefit scroungers”? Why would the GB team Olympic athletes who earn in a week what I earn in six years need to scrounge benefits?

It’s too simplistic to look at a medal table and conclude that the countries with the biggest haul are necessarily the best sporting nations. It is not a level playing field for all the competitors from around the world. The top countries (richest too) in the main, provide their athletes with some of the best training facilities in the world to prepare for the games. Although I do not have figures to hand, I would not be surprised if the UK spent more (sponsorship, lottery and public funding) on our athletes and sporting facilities than the whole of the African continent with the exception of SA perhaps.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t get behind our athletes, but let’s stop kidding ourselves that these are not corporate games and all the competitors are amateur sports men/women.

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I would certainly agree that the amateur ideal of the Olympics has long gone, but if you strip away some obvious sports such as football and tennis, the athletes do not earn obscene amounts of money. And why shouldn't they earn what they have worked hard for?

If I was making the decisions I wouldn't have football or tennis in the games, not only for that reason, but in these sports, the Olympics are not at the pinnacle of their profession. However, in the rowing, swimming, track & field etc, the Olympics are the highest any athlete can aspire to, and if some of them earn a lot of money afterwards having reached the top of the profession then I don't mind one tiny bit.

Let’s just hope that the lure of big bucks doesn’t prove to be too much of a temptation for some athletes, like in the past.

"You forgot to add that none of the athletes are benifit scroungers. Something like this shows the world that we are one of the best countries in the world"



:-X :-X :-X

Every one is welcome to there opinion, someone said that they do all the training etc. to represent there country. The days of them being amateur are long since gone in fact if they are any good they can earn a fortune.
So lets not get carried away in the thought that they do it for nothing more than representing there country. ;) ;)

The IOC need to quickly introduce two new medals for 4th and 5th place, so Team GB dont come away looking like a bunch of complete amateurs.

I've never understood the "amateur" status. If you earn your living from the sport you play then you are a professional.
Why can Tennis, football and cyclists be pros yet not in boxing?
Shaun White wins the snowboard gold every year in the winter games and is the highest paid snowboarder in the world.

And another thing. All this corporate bollox is getting on my nerves.
A friend owns a couple of Subway franchises and even though they're a sponsor, they're not allowed to advertise any conection to the Olympics a week before, during or after the games.
Why? Because McDonalds and Budweiser have paid for that privilege.
We've all heard about the bagel shop threatened with court action for making a display in the shape of the olypic logo.

The athletes deserve nothing but respect. Everyone else can f*ck off.

Not much change since this "Toffs and Toughs" was taken at Harrow 75 years ago.

Looks like footy is the game for the 'Toughs' and the Olympics for the 'Toffs'.
Half of Great Britain's medals came from just 7% of the population who are privately educated.
In contrast, the balance of professional football is that around 7% of players come from the private sector, which is an absolute mirror image of society.

And that imbalance could rise by the next Olympics if the government continue down the path of selling-off our school sports facilities to private developers. >:( >:( >:(

Ministers have approved proposals to sell off a London school's playing fields, including six tennis courts and a football pitch, despite mounting criticism of the coalition's planning for an Olympic legacy.

The land at Elliott school in Putney, south London, is being sold off to pay for a major refurbishment. It brings the number of school playing field sell-offs approved by the coalition to 22.