OLYMPIC IMPACT
Olympic impact T
O MEET THE demand for improving understanding of the Olympic legacy, and born from the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) own desire to develop
an objective analysis of each Games’ impact, in 2009 the ESRC commissioned a team from the University of East London (UEL) to produce the Olympic Games Impact Study (OGI) – a six-year project analysing data from before the games were awarded, right up to the present day. “The Olympics is classed as a ‘mega-event’ – these are planned or unplanned events with the potential to provide enormous transformations in a short time,” explained Professor Allan Brimicombe, head of the UEL Centre for Geo-Information studies and Project Manager for the London OGI. “Given the level of investment, we want to establish what the benefits are.” The team released a pre-games report in 2010 assessing 56 impact indicators, measuring factors as diverse as air quality and crime rates. It showed that the games were having a positive impact even before they began, with major improvements to water quality and transport networks around the east London Olympic park. Top-level sports were also already showing they’d been affected for the better by the Olympics coming to the UK – but the impact on school sports, nutrition and health were less clear.
A positive trend in sports participation was reflected in Team GB’s best-ever performance in the 2014 Winter Olympics
On 9 September 2012, six weeks of Olympic and Paralympic frenzy came to a close in London’s Olympic park, marking the beginning of a legacy set to last decades. There is little in the way of precedent for such huge projects – so how can we better understand their successes, challenges, and impacts? Aaron Boardley explains
“We have a lot of optimistic appraisals – but
we have to ask what the net benefit is. What are the effects of the Games compared to what we would have done had we not won the Games?” asked Professor Brimicombe. Though the number of adults taking part in regular sport increased between 2005 and 2012 – even after taking the rising population into account – it is difficult to isolate the causes of individuals’ changing habits.
“ One of the things London
did right is including legacy from the beginning
Understanding the specific net effects of the games remains a key focus for the team as they continue to gather data ahead of their post-games report, due in 2015, but their research is already feeding in to public policy at the highest level. Noted for his work on the OGI, Professor
”
Brimicombe was appointed as a Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on Olympic and Paralympic Legacy, which made 41 recommendations to better assure that the promised legacy will materialise. The current arrangements have resulted in confusion on timeframes and a lack of clear ownership, according to the Lords’ report, which recommends that a single government minister should oversee the many strands of Olympic legacy, and urged action in light of the ‘epidemic of obesity’ facing the UK. “There needs to be more investment in
producing a more active nation,” Professor Brimicombe explained, citing written evidence to the Select Committee claiming that obesity was costing the UK £20 billion ever year – far exceeding the cost to the public purse of hosting the games. Though the government’s own London 2012 meta- evaluation claims that more Brits are participating in sport because of the Olympics, it only looks at the short timeframe up to 2012 itself. Lasting impact is harder to achieve, and it’s not just a British problem, according to Professor Brimicombe: “No Olympics has achieved heightened participation long term.” The figures do appear to be going in the right
direction though, according to Sport England. Its research finds that there is a positive trend in sporting participation in terms of numbers doing
18 SOCIETY NOW SPRING 2014
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