WHAT price glory? The National Audit Office can tell you with immense precision: £3.3 million. That’s if you’re a swimmer. It’s £2.8 million in track and field, £2.7 million in rowing, £2 million in cycling . . . and a bargain basement £0.3 million in archery.

An auditor needs a firm fiscal definition of glory before he can count his beans, and glory is defined as an Olympic medal. The above figures represent National Lottery money allotted to individual sports, divided by medals won in Athens last summer. Take off the millions for convenience and that gives a nice figure: call it the Glory Index.

A high Glory Index represents rich investment and poor return. Had Paula Radcliffe not suffered her marathon breakdown, athletics would have had a Glory Index of just over 2.2. Equestrianism, always a soft target in value-for-money arguments, had a Glory Index of 1.1 from three medals. Sailing had a Glory Index of 1.4 from five medals. We spent £67.8 million of lottery money on glory. The Glory Index for all sports is 2.4.

Those are the facts. Now the arguments. Can we spend it better and buy more glory? Can we lower the national Glory Index?

Fact: money has purchased glory. In Atlanta in 1996, Britain finished 36th in the medals table with 15, only one of them gold (thanks, Steve and Matthew). Only then came lottery money. Britain finished tenth in Sydney, tenth again in Athens. There is a clear correlation between cash and glory.

But it’s not direct. Hurling money at sport doesn’t guarantee medals. Swimming came into the Athens Games backed by £6.5 million and won two minor medals: a serious disappointment. Or, if you prefer, a damn poor investment. Sailing, on the other hand, turned £7.2 million into five medals.

What does money do? That’s the big question. You could give me all £67.8 million and I still wouldn’t win the 100 metres, or even the dressage. Money has to be well spent: in the right way, on the right sport and, crucially, on the right people.

Let me take you to Athens airport and the queue at immigration. Most of us were on Olympic business: journalists, coaches, officials, athletes, all swapping greetings and guarded optimism. And there were two kids romping about and taking pictures of each other. In their Olympic kit. Delighted just to be there, delighted just to be taking part. Whooping and giggling and posing: get me! Union Jack and five rings on the left tit! Aren’t I the one! A life’s ambition had already been realised, and they hadn’t competed yet.

Faugh, I thought. Tourists. Fine. Enjoy it. But if anyone invested serious lottery money in you, it was only because it was too much trouble to flush it down the lavatory. The modern tendency is for smaller, leaner, harder, more purposeful Great Britain teams, but the fact remains that there will always be tourists trying to pretend they live there. If you seek value for money, you need a filter mechanism to trap them.

Money doesn’t make a champion. Money is dangerous. It gives the third-raters a luxurious view of themselves: look at me, I’m a professional athlete. For champions that’s a beginning, and a fact. For third-raters it’s an end, and a boast. The athletes themselves don’t always know which category they fall into; not until their moment arrives.

Money can be used for medical back-up, psychological help, warm-weather training, high- altitude training, high-level coaching. Money can be used for coaching the coaches, it can be used to free the best from the burden of earning a crust.

But those things are the bonuses. The most important thing that money does is not a positive thing at all. It is a resounding and crucial negative. An athlete with money is an athlete with no excuses. A funded athlete who fails does so because that athlete is not good enough. Not fast enough, not strong enough, not tough enough, not clever enough, not eager enough, not brave enough.

Before lottery money, every British athlete at the Olympic Games was clad in protective clothing: oh yes, the difficulties and the handicaps, it really is a wonder that our athletes do as well as they do. We’re allowed to fail: we’re plucky Brits.