Gal sends doubt question doubt regret about our government's lack of hand "Why do we have so few Olympic medals? Why not invest more in sports to give us national pride?"
So that's it, dear Gal, that "we" have no medals at all. You and I have never participated in the Olympics and the medals there, contrary to what the sportsmen and the newspapers sell you, are personal and not national. The International Olympic Committee is careful not to rank countries according to achievements (in the name of that world view which states that a city and not a country is the host of the Games) and therefore there is no official validity to the medal tables and there is not even an agreed way to arrange them: according to the gold medals, the total number of medals or weighting between quantity and quality. Thus, in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the USA was ranked first in the American media (according to the total number of medals) and China was at the top of the table in the Chinese newspapers (according to the gold medals). The idea that investing in high-achieving sports earns international prestige and national pride rests on some dubious axioms.
Let's start with respect. It's not hard to guess, Gal, where you got the idea that a medal is a source of national pride and the state should pay for it. This is the constant mantra of the sports businessmen that ministers are quick to adopt in order to prove "action" in the field. The Ministry of Culture and Sports thinks like you and on the official website you will find, for example, that the swimmer Anastasia Gorbenko "provided us with moments of Israeli pride when she stood at the top of the European podium in these complex days" (the complex days are the days of the missiles and the riots of the Wall Guard operation in which most of us were not confined to swimming competitions). Not infrequently, outstanding athletes are compared to ambassadors representing the country. However, comparing an athlete in the Olympics with an ambassador requires a lack of understanding of the very idea of the Olympics or of the concept of diplomatic representation, and as if with the intention of angering, standing at the top of the table of medals per million inhabitants are poor countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Cuba that have not invested millions in financing athletes and expensive facilities.
Minister Livnat jumped on the podium
Politicians are not the only ones in love with high-achieving sports. In Athens 2004, when the surfer Gal Friedman won Israel's only gold medal, the Minister of Sports at the time, Limor Livnat, went up to take a picture with him on the podium. In doing so, she joined a long line of leaders that began with the city-state leaders of classical Greece who appropriated the glory of winning the Olympics for their country or themselves. Accordingly, other countries are pushed to invest massively in gifted athletes and the result is that the price of a medal gets more expensive from Olympics to Olympics, in 2016 the financial news agency Bloomberg calculated the price of an Olympic medal for the American taxpayers. It turned out that individual snow sledding (Luge) is the most expensive profession, each medal in this branch cost an investment of over 14 million dollars, while a ski medal at the same Winter Olympics cost only about one and a half million. The American taxpayer spends about 12 million dollars for the right to see Keshet his compatriot wearing a medal, while the public investment in a tennis medal is about 800 thousand dollars - the difference is probably due to tennis's own sources of financing.
But an even more problematic assumption is that winning an Olympic or World Championship medal "returns the investment" in boosting satisfaction, prestige or national pride.
Let's start with international prestige. Test yourself Gal: do you cherish Olympic powers like the late East Germany, Ceausescu's Romania or Jamaica? How much has China's prestige increased in your eyes following the playing of the Chinese national anthem many times in the last Olympics? Most sports fans are focused on their national teams or on sports that arouse their curiosity and, except for us, there are few people who look for Israel's name in the long and boring table of medals to whistle in admiration or sneer with contempt.
And what about the mood? Isn't it worth investing to give some satisfaction to the people?
It is difficult to determine how much joy "our" winning a medal brings. Comprehensive surveys have shown that indeed, a sporting victory has a positive effect on the satisfaction of the population. A statistical study in the USA even found a decrease in the suicide rate among residents of cities that won championships in basketball, baseball or football. But the same studies also show that this feeling of happiness is short-lived and what's more cruel - relatively. The sporting joy and its sister - the disappointment - depend on the early expectations. In surveys conducted during and after the soccer World Cups, it became clear that those whose national team qualified for a higher stage than they expected received a heaping dose of joy compared to citizens of countries that qualified for the same stage but expected an even more impressive achievement. The investment in Gal Friedman returned a "happy dividend" but created a bar of expectations that was deepened by the disappointment in the non-golden Olympics in 2008. But is it even possible to measure the "amount of joy" that a victory produces? According to the economist Georgios Kavestos, the answer is positive and he checked how much joy the taxpayers "earn" for their investment. In a large-scale survey in 12 European countries, the simple question "How well are you these days?" was asked. Kvastos tested how much Olympic success and World Cup and European Cup wins succeed in bringing happiness to people (in other words, "returning the investment"). The results will disappoint the sportsmen. The improvement in mood due to Olympic success is very small and crosses the threshold of statistical significance only among men under 50 with a high income, precisely the group that needs the least additional improvement in mood. The same study found that hosting a major sporting event does what winning medals fails to do - significantly improve the collective mood. Perhaps because in the host country almost every citizen is a partner or personally knows active partners and not just watching sweaty athletes from an air-conditioned living room. Public investment in sports based on medal counts results in a focus on a small number of sports in each country - those sports that have infrastructure, public awareness and experts, so a significant percentage of the Chinese medals in the Olympics come from diving and Australia has specialized in swimming.
And what about national pride? Shouldn't it be worth investing a few more millions to unite our people and raise their heads?
National pride is a complex concept, it is related to identity, loyalty, self-esteem and is a kind of public equivalent to the equally vague concept of "self-respect" in the individual. This is the strong point in the arguments for investment in the successful sport because national pride is sleepy by nature and ceremonies, symbols and celebrations are needed to awaken it. Sports indeed provide opportunities to flood the national affiliation into consciousness. Nationalism in general is fed by a pool of stories that trap people around an idea or a unique characteristic that distinguishes them from the others. An Olympic win could certainly make for such a captivating story but not every decorated neck will deliver the goods. For a national story, a happy ending is not enough - it must appeal to the community's self-image. This happens when the win is in a "national sport" such as soccer in South America or ice hockey in Canada. A success story that is not identified with the local culture will not be integrated as part of the national story and its contribution to pride or unity will be minimal. Thus the sledging team of tropical Jamaica who insisted on competing in the Winter Olympics won much sympathy but left no mark on national pride. This is where pride sometimes collides with the economy. The medals are relatively easy to collect in "side" branches such as rowing or surfing, which have a loose connection to the Israeli self-image.
From the statements of businessmen and politicians about the importance of high-achieving sports, the image of national pride emerges as a sort of leaky bucket or fuel tank that must be filled from time to time with pride-inspiring achievements so that it does not run out, God forbid. The sociological research shows that national pride is a very stable characteristic of a population, the changes in the degree of pride and the subjects of this pride are very small and slow. The effect of a single event (such as winning a medal) the whole degree of pride is zero.
And let's not forget, there are several other areas in which national pride can be expressed. Israel is in a respectable place when comparing the answer to the question "How proud are you of your country" even though we are in last place almost as far as sports pride. Over 150 countries participate in the Olympics and about 60% of the delegations will return home without a single medal while 10% of the teams get about 70% of the medals. Despite these figures, most underachieving countries do not have a problem of national pride.
In conclusion, the state wave invests quite a bit in high-achieving sports, the investment in an athlete considered to have Olympic potential is much higher than what a gifted musician, for example, can receive. From this investment some of us may get a modest dose of joy, national pride will probably not grow from it.
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Really interesting analysis
I always thought that investing in competitive sports, certainly at the Olympic level, was a waste of money. In my opinion, it is much better to invest in popular sports and youth sports, for example subsidizing classes. (Proven to reduce addiction, and smoking)
You can add a follow-up analysis on the benefits of hosting the Olympics and major sports events (such as the World Cup)
It is a waste of national funds for something called "Olympic sport" even though it has no economic model or entertainment value for leisure time. The country does not need it, and it only continues because no one wants to disconnect the ventilator. And with all due respect, mercenaries coming to the State of Israel to "improve the gardens" is simply a national deception, it's not just that Maccabi became the leader of anyone here who is Jewish.
The real question is why do we even need it, if we want an unnecessary institution with national pride we already have one, it's called the president of the country.