Friday’s opening ceremony from the Olympic Park was more than impressive. The spectacle, entitled Green and Pleasant, apparently cost over £27 million from the budget of £81 million reserved for ceremonies. It is assumed that the one billion people who watched the show from every corner of the globe enjoyed it, but understandably they were not really interested in the enormous costs. After all, since London won the bid to stage the XXX Olympiad way back seven years ago almost to the day, the budget for them has continually soared and it is estimated that the costs will be around £9.35 billion and possibly more. It is noted that a contribution of £625m was made from Londoners. Maybe not all of them were happy paying extra rates!

The new venues cost £3.1 billion, while security to protect the Games totals £553m. One million pieces of sports equipment – including 26,400 tennis balls, 600 basketballs, 800 water polo balls, 2,400 footballs, 6,000 archery targets, 1,630 discs for weightlifting, 432 pairs of boxing gloves, 270,000 clay shotgun targets and other necessities have long been purchased and are in use. Lord Seb Coe and the members of the Organising Committee are insisting on clean events and 5,000 doping tests will be carried out.

To-day’s top level sport is big business – and the bigger the event, the bigger the business and eventual returns. The Olympic Games will boost the British economy, with tourism alone accounting for an income of £2.1 billion. TV rights were sold for £560m, while sponsors and official suppliers added another £450m. Ticket sales have brought in £9.6m and the sky is the limit from the marketing aspect.

Perhaps it is appropriate to mention the ‘Maltese connexion’, when referring to profits from the Games.

The Malta Connection

The 1976 Montreal Games were so expensive that the debt was only finally paid in 1993. After that, no city or country wanted to host the Olympics. The International Olympic Committee was having trouble finding a host for the 1984 Games and when Los Angeles decided that it would take up the challenge, a stipulation was made that no local funds would be used. Peter Ueberroth, who was in charge of the Games, developed a new way of thinking about financing them and for the first time in history, the Games were profitable. Asked how he came up with these ideas, he attributed the results to Edward de Bono’s philosophy of lateral thinking.

That’s more than an Olympic gold medal for Malta!

Speaking of medals, the results we are obtaining in sport today reflect the government’s commitment and robust policy in this area.

Pride in our national athletes

Over the last few years, the government, through the Kunsill Malti għall-Isport, has introduced a number of initiatives to help with the preparation of our top athletes for international commitments.

Malta is generally represented in the Mediterranean Games, very strongly in the Games for Small States of Europe, the Commonwealth Games and even in the Olympics. Currently we have five athletes in London for the Olympics, taking part in three disciplines.

Andrew Chetcuti and Nicola Muscat will take part in swimming events, William Chetcuti is a strong contender in double-trap shooting and Rachid Chouhal and Diane Borg will be taking part in the Men’s and Women’s 100 metres. They will be among the 10,490 athletes from 205 countries who are in London to compete in the 302 medal events. Swimmer Matthew Sultana is our representative among 4,200 athletes from 165 countries who will take part in the Paralympics, which includes 503 events spread over 11 days.

It is fair to say that our sports ambassadors had their best training schedules. The Malta Olympic Committee was given financial grants to carry out their programme with the chosen athletes and their associations, while the 20-20 scheme allowed our top athletes to spend half their working hours in training and practice. Last year saw another addition to the various schemes with the creation of a special unit within the Armed Forces that caters for promising athletes who will have 20 hours a week devoted to training which will eventually be increased to 40, thus introducing full-time athletes for the first time in the history of sport in Malta. Mention must also be made of the financial support for the Youth Development scheme that the MOC runs for our promising youngsters.

Furthermore, our athletes and their coaches and officials are allowed special leave with pay for the time in which they are engaged in international competitions staged locally or abroad. Last year there were 185 requests for a total of 914 days’ leave, of which 817 were actually approved.

This year we introduced sport scholarships to enable our young people to succeed in the career of their choice, while in the forthcoming weeks we will open Malta’s first school of sport. “Catch them young” has long been the secret of future success.

Through these schemes, the preparation and eventually the results will hopefully show a marked improvement, but one must also consider the general limitations due to the size of our Islands and the obvious restrictions, especially in numbers.

I wish our athletes every success in the 2012 Olympiad. We are proud to be part of a sporting event that sees the participation of nearly every country in the world.