25 July 2012
London calling
Today The Drum, in collaboration with The Conversation, gets you warmed up for the Olympics.
As the athletes zig-zag around London in coaches, looking for the Olympic Village, and security staff get caught napping on their X-ray machines, academics are putting sport in the context of society and finding out if the Olympics really do matter.
From the money pit of Olympics infrastructure to the deep-fry vats of the biggest sponsors, from drug tests to the limits of athletic performance, from the contrails of the thousands of arriving flights to the bed bugs visitors will take home with them; we poke our analytic noses into every corner of the Olympic experience.
Richard Tomlinson, Chair in Urban planning at the University of Melbourne, looks at the history of Olympic infrastructure from past events. With so many stadia left mouldering, should we expect a better legacy from London 2012?
When London won the Olympics, it was booming. The GFC changed everything. In 2008, Tessa Jowell, minister for the Olympics, said: "Had we known what we know now, would we have bid for the Olympics? Almost certainly not."
In 2004 the cost of hosting the London Olympics was estimated at £2.75 billion. The cost of the subsequently downscaled event has reportedly escalated to between £11 billion and £13 billion.
Because the Olympics are profitable for the International Olympics Committee and not for the host city and country – a view that is occasionally debated – the rationale for seeking to host the Olympics and for the commitment of public resources generally focuses on the Olympics intangible "legacy".
Read the full story here.
Mike Daube, Professor of Health Policy at Curtin University, takes on the Olympics major sponsors. Why is the world's most prestigious sporting event affiliating itself with fast food, sugary drink and alcohol, he wants to know.
It is hard to reconcile the objective of controlling commercialisation with the reality that the Olympics' "Top Sponsors" include Coca-Cola and McDonalds.
McDonalds is "the official restaurant of the Olympic Games", and is already engaged in massive television, print, billboard and online promotion linking its products with the best in sport. McDonalds has even recently been reported as trying to prevent anyone else from selling chips at Olympic venues.
Ironically, the Olympic Games organisers themselves clearly recognise that this is a totally unacceptable association. A special question on their website asks "Why is McDonalds a sponsor?" But there is no rationale or justification other than that "McDonalds has been an 'official sponsor of the Olympic Games' since 1976".
Read the full story here.
Simon Outram, postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living at Victoria University, looks at a future where doping is legal. What would a drugged up Olympics be like for athletes? Would it be any fun at all for spectators?
Let's suppose there's a magic pill for each Olympic event. Given a minimal number of training hours, and taking the magic pill a specific number of hours before the race, each athlete would run, swim or throw exactly the same. It would be a sporting disaster, but a triumph for biotechnology.
But even if this was not the case, drug use of this sort would be an additional factor, not the factor, in determining the race order. All the banned supplements in the world – at correct doses – won't overcome the need for lots and lots of training.
Read the full story here.
Kate Murphy, an NHMRC Career Development Fellow at the University of Melbourne, asks just how good athletes can get. Records keep tumbling, but is there a limit to athletic performance?
Other factors contributing to athletic performance include psychology, nutrition, training methods and technology. Over the past few decades, leaps and bounds in each of these areas have advanced athletic performance.
Technology is constantly evolving. In swimming, there have been major advances in the design of Olympic swimming pools, reducing turbulence and improving performance. Olympic pools are now deeper, have ten lanes instead of eight, and anti-wave lane ropes.
Read the full story here.
Judith Mair is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management at Monash University, and she takes on London's claim to be the greenest Games ever. Sure, they've made big strides, but can a mega-event ever be truly sustainable?
The conundrum is that the Olympic Games and other mega events are part of the problem, as well as trying to be part of the solution. London is expecting half a million overseas visitors this summer, twice the usual number. How can the event claim to be environmentally sustainable when it is the cause of around 250,000 extra passenger journeys, most of which will be air travel? It seems inherently unsustainable.
The environmental initiatives also seem localised to the host destination and limited to the duration of the event itself. For example, it is difficult to ascertain whether the carbon emissions calculations of the London Olympics include GHG emissions caused by the air travel of visitors to the UK. It seems that very little attention has been paid to the holistic global environmental consequences of this, or indeed any other mega events.
Read the full story here.
Cameron Webb, Clinical Lecturer and Hospital Scientist at the University of Sydney, warns that if you're travelling to London, you're as likely to bring back bed bugs as a Harrods bag.
Millions of spectators, many of them foreign travellers, will attend the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Bed bug infestations in London have already grabbed headlines. It isn't surprising given other major cities such as New York and Paris haven't escaped the bed bug pandemic either. Hotels within these international gateway cities are always going to be more susceptible as a high turnover of guests increases the risk of infestations occurring.
Big cities around the world have fallen victim to the bed bug. Devyn Caldwell
Don't be fooled into thinking it's only a problem for budget accommodation. Even the most expensive hotels can still harbour bed bugs. The good news is that responsible accommodation providers are likely to be aware of the bed bug problem. There are increasing efforts by industry groups to develop strategies, similar to those in place in Australia, to minimise the risks of bed bugs.
Read the full story here.
The Conversation publishes commentary, research and analysis from Australian universities and the CSIRO. View The Conversation's full profile here.
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