THE decision to appoint Sir Steve Redgrave as a board member for London’s 2012 Olympic bid was every bit as predictable as the outcome of one of his races. His credentials are obvious. Since capturing his fifth successive gold medal at the Sydney Olympics the rower has come to personify sporting excellence and has carved out a unique place in the public consciousness.
He is described as the Athlete of the Century on the official website of the International Olympic Committee and one survey placed his nailbiting victory in Sydney as the second most compelling television spectacle of all-time behind Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk. For many, his no-nonsense professionalism cuts a vivid contrast with the hype surrounding the fashion icon and sometime footballer now living in Madrid. To huge swaths of the public he is, simply, the greatest British sportsman of all time.
Which has to be the biggest case of mass delusion since the Labour Party convinced itself that Michael Foot could win a general election. The reality is that Redgrave’s reputation is nothing more than a carefully manufactured myth: measured purely in terms of sporting ability, he is but a midget compared with David Beckham.
It is a simple case of statistics — or would be if FISA, the world governing body of rowing, bothered to collate membership figures from its affiliated associations. The fact is that virtually nobody rows beyond a handful of upper middle class chaps in the western world who have the means to pay for boats and the expensive waterside property needed to house them. The annual cost of membership at my local club is £215. The sport is virtually non-existent across much of the planet — in India, for example, there are just 1,000 rowers from a population of more than one billion.
Well-intentioned international development programmes to subsidise rowing in places such as Kenya have foundered because proposed sites have been infested with raw sewage, while attempts to encourage participation among socially disadvantaged groups in the west have been an expensive failure — often with the public purse picking up the tab.
It is difficult to conceive of a sport less suited to mass participation: not only is the equipment expensive and cumbersome but you also have to live near water (unless, that is, you happen to own a helicopter). Even the most illustrious rowing nations command minuscule memberships: the United States has 15,000, England 19,000, while Germany boasts the world’s largest figure with 79,000.
There are probably fewer than one million registered rowers worldwide, a total that understates the true number (because some rowers choose not to register) — but not by much. This means that there is roughly one rower per 6,000 of the world’s population. But even this paltry figure massively overstates the quantity of competition that Redgrave had to overcome to win his gold medals. Rowing is divided into 14 different medal events, making it, ludicrously, one of the biggest sports at the Olympic Games. But unlike athletics, where there are varying distances challenging the energy system in different ways, all rowing events are contested over 2,000 metres.
The categories are based upon whether you row alone or with one, three or seven team-mates; whether you use one oar or two; and whether there is a cox (Redgrave has won golds in the coxed four, the coxless pair and the coxless four). There are also three medal events for lightweights. All of which leads to the inescapable conclusion that being a member of the best coxless fours’ team in the world is roughly equivalent to being the best footballer in Ipswich.
Redgrave’s admirers counter with the argument that all any sportsman can do is defeat the available competition. “It is conceivable that Steve would have won his gold medals even if rowing had been highly popular throughout the world,” Richard Budgett, a gold medal-winner with Redgrave in the coxed fours in Los Angeles and now an eminent sports doctor, said.
Conceivable but highly unlikely. Another respected doctor who worked with the Britain team in Sydney said that, given their success in long-distance running, it would take just a minor growth in the popularity of rowing in Africa to blow the likes of Redgrave out of the water. The doctor was reluctant to be named because questioning the status of Redgrave was tantamount to being excommunicated from the British sports establishment.
None of which is to say that we should not salute the 41-year-old’s achievements. He is a brilliant and admirable sportsman, and I joined with millions of other viewers in experiencing a spine-tingling rush as he powered through the line to victory in Sydney. Besides, there is nothing so terribly wrong about someone being on the receiving end of disproportionate acclaim.
No, the damaging development is that those who finance British sport seem to have bought the hype. The funding quangos have adopted a policy towards elite performance in Olympic sports that mechanically seeks to maximise the haul of gold medals from the available cash. This approach was largely responsible for our success in Sydney, where Britain triumphed in sports that are either relatively unpopular in global terms (modern pentathlon, track cycling, rowing) or so costly that other countries are deterred from investing in them (sailing). In athletics, the blue riband event, British success was not dissimilar to that achieved in Atlanta in 1996, supposedly our sporting nadir. In each case Britain won six track and field medals (two of each colour in 2000; four silver and two bronze in 1996).
There is something strikingly cynical about a policy that throws money at unpopular sports that command Olympic status (and, preferably, lots of medals, too) while penalising athletes who choose to battle it out in sports of global significance. Eventually the public will see through the façade and recognise that Olympic gold medals are far too crude a currency in which to measure the nation’s sporting prowess. And it is then that Beckham will overhaul Redgrave in the estimation of the nation.
