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Yet another example of why we should never have got these games ,a collapsable stadium ,needing a 90m baleout a BOA that is hoping for a mega payday cos with governmentfunds drying up their sports have little mass appeal. So poor ol johnny taxpayer will pick up the bill if its a loss and BOA get the profits Just hope this junket isnt still being baled out for years to come

The BOA should be very grateful for 20 million in the first place. How is this 400 million profit from the games coming about when you take into account that something like 9 billion of tax payers money has gone into the hosting the event? Surely any profit should be given back to the government, maybe to be spent on hospitals, roads etc...

Sports is great, but the Olympics will be its pinnacle. We need to turn our attention to more practical matters afterwards.

The profit from the olympic games should be given solely to Lord Coe and David Beckham for their tremendous efforts in bringing the games to Britain. Fantastic effort lads and they are without doubt the most deserving of us all, national treasures.

The more I think about it, the more it annoys me. Any Olympic profits given to the BOA post game is affectively the taxpayer bailing out an organisation that is in financial trouble (remind anybody of the banks?) We have paid 9 billion for the games and as tax payers should get any profit given back to fund our badly hit public services.

Before they even think about any profits, they should pay back the public funding given against the will of the vast majority of those whom were forced to pay for it.

With interest.

Well Well Well... and all your deluded supporters thought the Olympic bid was about bringing the sport to England!!! ...It was always about the money, money for a bunch of over-rated individuals who have done nothing for society other than cover themselves in self-glory. And for what? ...soldiers put they lives on the line while some guy can ride a bike fast or run fast? wow, what an honour.. NOT!!!

'And for what? ...soldiers put they lives on the line while some guy can ride a bike fast or run fast? wow, what an honour.. NOT!!!'

You could also argue that we have spent far to much money on war.

Anyway regardless, some of those soldiers who put their lives on the line... you know what they are the guys and girls who are riding a bike or running fast for the British paralympic team... and you know something else, a number of the able-bodied olympians were (or in some cases still are) members of the British army. Kelly Holmes for example was a sargeant.

I can't believe this is not getting more press than it is. This is greed wasting public money by suing to get public money when the public is facing tax increases to fund a massive deficit and debt. The 2012 olympic committee got themselves a safe construction budget to save themselves the embarrassment of having to justify to the public why they could not build to a budget. Now when they were looking come in under budget some greedy bunch on ingrates is attempting to take that money for their own agenda.

THIS IS PUBLIC MONEY. STOP WASTING MONEY SUING TO GET IT. PUT IT BACK AND REDUCE OUR TAXES, EMPLOY PUBLIC SERVICES, PAY FOR THE NHS.

Are the BOA prepared to cough up the dough if the games come in at a loss? No? then they should stick to the LEGAl agreement that they willingly signed up to.

And it hardly demonstrates any sort of 'inclusivity' with paralympic sport when the BOA basically says 'we don't care about your games because they will run at a loss'

Is there a supply of revolvers and Whisky at BOA HQ for Lord Moynihan to use next week?

7. At 20:15pm on 25th Mar 2011, U14628062 wrote:

Anyway regardless, some of those soldiers who put their lives on the line... you know what they are the guys and girls who are riding a bike or running fast for the British paralympic team... and you know something else, a number of the able-bodied olympians were (or in some cases still are) members of the British army. Kelly Holmes for example was a sargeant.
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I didn't know that, and I humbly step down off my soap box and apologise.

It is worth remembering that the cost of staging the Games has no bearing on this argument. That cost was taken on by Government after the bid was won in Singapore. There have already been infrastructure benefits to East London and some of the £9bn + cost of staging the games will be recouped when the Stadium, media center, athletes village etc are sold off after the event.

This is about the profit (hopefully) from the staging of the sporting extravaganza next July. For its part, the BOA has given up its marketing rights to the Olympic rings - and this has, over history, been its primary source of income. Everyone should remember that this organisation receives no public funding for delivering us the team of athletes that excelled in Beijing and will no doubt do the same in London.

That said, the sight of our sporting elite throwing pies at eachother is an unedifying sight and an embarrasment to this country. I'm afraid the BOA have set themselves up as the Millwall of elite sport. As that club's supporters used to (and probably still do) sing, 'everyone hates us, but we don't care'.

I fear that Lord Moynihan's dictatorial leadership will do irrepairable damage to an organisation that has served British sport well for over 100 years. Will the National Olympic Committee (mambers of our 33 Olympic Sport) have the bottle to stand up to their Chairman and say that the time has come to accept that this is not the way to do business? If recent history is anything to go by, the answer is no.

If that is the case, where does that leave us? My guess is, that in the aftermath of a hugely successful Games, we'll see the BOA perilously close to financial ruin and funding available to our fantastic Olympic athletes cut off dramatically as the Government cuts bite even deeper.

The last chance saloon is really upon us!

'funding available to our fantastic Olympic athletes cut off dramatically'

Really? Even when you consider that a lot of that funding comes from the lottery and not directly from the government?

U14628062 - true, but a significant sum of UK Sport's funding is Exchequer grant. I'm also a cynical soul and can't believe that the Government won't eye up Lottery funding for a range of other uses once the Games is over and the dogfight for Government money hots up.

Perhaps you assume that the National Lottery will maintain its current impressive turnover post Games - I hope you're right.

The public has already been bled dry paying for these games, and we'll see very little of that money back.
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The whole Olympic Games / World Cup shtick is that they are a highly effective way of siphoning money out of the taxpayers' pocket, and into the pockets of wealthy biusinessmen, construction firms, and other vested interests.
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Sad but true.

Very unsavoury business, and sadly a return to the dark pre-Lottery days, when every sport, quango and funding body would sell it's own soul/grandmother (delete as applicable) to secure its own funding streams. I hope this is not a sign of things to come in the post-2012 era.

Something is very clearly not right. Firstly, the resignation (ousting?) of BPA chief exec Phil Lane a few weeks back, then, as other posters have pointed out, the rather unpleasant inference that the Paralympics are more than likely going to be a drain which should be avoided like the plague - not the kind of attitude I'd like to see.

Once again, this is all about fiefdoms and territorialism. The BOA is quite right that it will still be standing post 2012 (subject to not running itself into the ground with hundreds of ill-conceived schemes, shiny new offices, and cross-over initiatives which step across the boundaries of their remit). Admittedly, LOCOG is effectively just the host of the party, but there will be others still standing - all the NGBs, the BPA, UK Sport - where does the money come from ultimately??

Re: the memo/letter. What a load of pompous rhetorical nonsense. While I do not dispute the sentiment - what on earth does it have to do with an organisation which has the remit of picking, preparing and sending elite performance teams to the Olympic Games?

Colin Moynihan is completely lacking in judgement. His political ambitions went belly up in the 80s over his daft ID scheme for football fans which never got off the ground.

His political ambitions are almost certainly going the same way over this dispute & the BOA spending money they can ill afford on doing roles that UK Sport have been doing well since lottery funding was introduced in the late 90s.

Let's hope Moynihan & his ally Hunt lose their jobs over the next few months - Sir Clive Woodward can also go off & take the new role of performance director at the RFU, a role for which he is eminently qualified & worl alongside Martin Johnson again. The BOA can then get back to what it's done well for over 100 years before Moynihan & his large ego walked through the door.

To me, it seems like the BOA negotiated a bad deal at the beginning, signed on the dotted line and are now trying to go back on it. Or the otherside strong armed the BOA into taking a deal quickly and the BOA failed to do the maths.

Either way, it isn't great for sport in the UK ...

The fact is that the salaries and expenses of BOA staff has doubled in less than 2years to an astonishing £4.2 million pounds. They have given themselves vastly inflated pay increases and they simply have not got enough money to fund the programmes that they are obliged to. It is a culture of greed and incompetence that is being exposed here and it is Hunt and Moynihan who are culpable. I wonder what their salaries were increased by ?

According to the BOA, its purpose is to "....... prepare and lead our nation’s finest athletes at the ....Olympic Games. Working with the National Governing Bodies, the BOA selects Team GB from the best sportsmen and women who will go on to compete in the 26 summer and 7 winter Olympic sports at the greatest sporting competition in the world."

So.... do they REALLY pick the teams? Does the BOA pick the rowing team and not Jurgen Grobler? Do they get involved with picking the track cycling team, even when the cycling set-up is well stocked with coaches, managers etc etc?

I don't think so. I'm sure UK Athletics know how to pick a team, as does each individual sports body.

All they appear to do (of any real benefit) is lay on 'holding camps'.

It all seems rather self serving to me. Yes, we DO need a collective body to co-ordinate multi-sport events..... but it does really require the millions that the BOA are after?

I see from this



That the BOA (well Moynihan) are 'eager to resolve Olympic Row'.

So that would be an unnecessary and costly row that he instigated.

Very generous of him!

Surely if he belives that the BOA have been hard done his argument is with the previous BOA chiefs and their legal / financial advisers who signed the original agreement with LOCOG in the first place.

It's never about THE GAMES, THE ATHLETES, THE PUBLIC.
In the end, it's all about cash ! The more cash generated, the more to argue about. It's a Great British Trait, it's what we do.
If there was an Olympic Medal for Whingeing, GB would get Gold, Silver, and Bronze.
Don't mention the word LEGACY. It's thrown around like a dust devil, and just like a dust devil, gone in an instant, nowhere to be found.
The 2012 London Olympic Games are just a board game for the organisers. A toy to be put back in the toy cupboard, when the novelty wears off.