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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...s-funding.html
Greek Athletes Seek Jobs as Olympics Funding Dries Up
Greek athletes may have to abandon training and start looking for jobs as the financial crisis slashes sports funding in the birthplace of the Olympics.
“Athletes are being forced to stop because they can’t get by financially,” said Stella Lazarou Tigka, the president of the Vouliagmeni Nautical Association, a sports club in a seaside resort south of Athens. Eight of its members were on the 13- strong national women’s water polo team that won the gold medal last week at the FINA World Championships in Shanghai.
Greece can no longer afford to support athletes while they train. With the country in its third year of recession, state spending on sports has been slashed. Funds to the Greek Olympic Committee for 2009-2012 were cut to 8 million euros ($11.3 million) from 30 million euros in the previous four years, Hellenic Olympics Committee President Spyros Capralos said.
Austerity measures pledged by the government in exchange for a 110 billion-euro May 2010 bailout plan from the European Union and International Monetary Fund may make matters worse. Beyond hurting the competitiveness of its athletes at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, the biggest economic upheaval in a generation may put Greece decades behind as discretionary spending on activities such as sports is deemed not a priority.
“It’s an easy option; sports or culture are usually the ones that have their budgets cuts,” said Alan Seymour, a professor at the University of Northampton in the U.K. “People may get a negative perspective on extra funding to elite sports.”
Seeds Sown
Greece spent more than 11 billion euros to host the Olympic Games of 2004 -- double its initial budget -- building gleaming stadiums and sports arenas at more than a dozen sites and sowing the seeds of the current financial crisis. Its budget deficit widened to a euro-area record for the time of 7.5 percent of gross domestic product.
The current austerity measures are aimed at scaling back the budget gap to 1.1 percent of GDP in 2015 from 10.5 percent last year. With unemployment set to average 14.5 percent this year, austerity measures prompted violent protests in Athens.
The GDP, which contracted 4.4 percent in 2010, will shrink a further 3.8 percent this year, according to a report from EU and IMF inspectors in July. The nation’s debt load will peak at 161 percent of GDP next year. It’s already the biggest in the euro region’s history.
“This is a time of unprecedented fiscal effort and we have to cut funding all around,” Prime Minister George Papandreou told his Cabinet on July 26.
Feeling the Pain
Funding to athletic federations was cut 24 percent from 2009 to 40.4 million euros in 2011, the budget of the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s General Secretariat for Sport shows.
“State funding is down but in the situation the country is in, it would be provocative for it not to be,” said Antonios Dimitrakopoulos, president of the Hellenic Sailing Federation.
Greece called off hosting the 2013 Athens Deaflympics and the multisport Volos Mediterranean Games in the port city north of the capital for a lack of funds. Some athletic groups have shut down, unable to cover operating costs.
The Vouliagmeni association founded in 1937 by local sportsmen in the eponymous seaside town is beginning to feel the pain. Its open swimming center, for instance, costs 200,000 euros a year to maintain. The association has to also spend on travel and training for its champions. Many athletes train for six to seven hours a day, including weekends, requiring the club to cover their living expenses. It has done that through membership fees and state aid. Such grants are now all but gone.
‘Abuses’
“Last year, we lowered the budget and it is imperative that we keep cutting,” Lazarou Tigka said. “Reducing stipends to athletes and cutting personnel have been among the cuts. When athletes are forced to stop because they can’t get by, they will have to change direction, find a different job.”
Dependence on the state for jobs, pensions and social benefits has come to symbolize Greece’s ailing finances. Athletes were often given public sector jobs to support their training. Much of the spending on sports has been inefficient, says Panos Bitsaksis, general secretary for Sport.
“We need to examine the piles of money given to Greek sport in the past and if it had the result it should have,” he said. “Many athletes received salaries for positions they weren’t filling. There was abuse of privileges by athletes who were no longer active.”
Olympic Bid
Many of the 22 athletic halls built on the 15 Olympic sites for the 2004 Athens Games remain largely unused. Olympic Properties SA, the state-run agency that manages the venues built for the Olympics, is unprofitable. Multiple plans on using the venues to raise money have failed.
Culture and Tourism Minister Pavlos Yeroulanos told lawmakers in July last year that he’s pushing for a body that can document, plan, advise and regulate sports efficiently. When he took over the ministry in 2009, the same amounts could be allocated to sports Greece excels in, such as Marathons, and ones where it doesn’t, such as ice hockey, he said.
“We inherited huge problems,” he said. “The country would commit to an event which it hadn’t cleared funds for from the finance ministry in order to be able to host it.”
The Olympic Committee’s Capralos says athletes who qualify for the 2012 Greek delegation will participate.
“Preparation for the Olympics depends on finances,” he said. “When you don’t have enough money to send athletes to international events or training centers to prepare in the best possible way, of course it affects their performance.”
Not Eroded
Greece won two silver Olympic medals and two bronze ones at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That compares with 16 in Athens in 2004 -- including six gold medals -- the second-highest since it hosted the first modern Olympic Games in the Panathenaic Stadium in 1896, winning 46 medals including 10 gold ones.
“Going back in time, all the things Olympia in Greece represents will never be eroded,” University of Northampton’s Seymour said. “History and tradition won’t just be dismissed at the press of a button because of its economic difficulties, but it’s just something they will have to wrestle with.”
bond traders in front of home depot holding signs: 'will trade MBS/CDS for food' ?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...s-funding.html
Greek Athletes Seek Jobs as Olympics Funding Dries Up
Greek athletes may have to abandon training and start looking for jobs as the financial crisis slashes sports funding in the birthplace of the Olympics.
“Athletes are being forced to stop because they can’t get by financially,” said Stella Lazarou Tigka, the president of the Vouliagmeni Nautical Association, a sports club in a seaside resort south of Athens. Eight of its members were on the 13- strong national women’s water polo team that won the gold medal last week at the FINA World Championships in Shanghai.
Greece can no longer afford to support athletes while they train. With the country in its third year of recession, state spending on sports has been slashed. Funds to the Greek Olympic Committee for 2009-2012 were cut to 8 million euros ($11.3 million) from 30 million euros in the previous four years, Hellenic Olympics Committee President Spyros Capralos said.
Austerity measures pledged by the government in exchange for a 110 billion-euro May 2010 bailout plan from the European Union and International Monetary Fund may make matters worse. Beyond hurting the competitiveness of its athletes at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, the biggest economic upheaval in a generation may put Greece decades behind as discretionary spending on activities such as sports is deemed not a priority.
“It’s an easy option; sports or culture are usually the ones that have their budgets cuts,” said Alan Seymour, a professor at the University of Northampton in the U.K. “People may get a negative perspective on extra funding to elite sports.”
Seeds Sown
Greece spent more than 11 billion euros to host the Olympic Games of 2004 -- double its initial budget -- building gleaming stadiums and sports arenas at more than a dozen sites and sowing the seeds of the current financial crisis. Its budget deficit widened to a euro-area record for the time of 7.5 percent of gross domestic product.
The current austerity measures are aimed at scaling back the budget gap to 1.1 percent of GDP in 2015 from 10.5 percent last year. With unemployment set to average 14.5 percent this year, austerity measures prompted violent protests in Athens.
The GDP, which contracted 4.4 percent in 2010, will shrink a further 3.8 percent this year, according to a report from EU and IMF inspectors in July. The nation’s debt load will peak at 161 percent of GDP next year. It’s already the biggest in the euro region’s history.
“This is a time of unprecedented fiscal effort and we have to cut funding all around,” Prime Minister George Papandreou told his Cabinet on July 26.
Feeling the Pain
Funding to athletic federations was cut 24 percent from 2009 to 40.4 million euros in 2011, the budget of the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s General Secretariat for Sport shows.
“State funding is down but in the situation the country is in, it would be provocative for it not to be,” said Antonios Dimitrakopoulos, president of the Hellenic Sailing Federation.
Greece called off hosting the 2013 Athens Deaflympics and the multisport Volos Mediterranean Games in the port city north of the capital for a lack of funds. Some athletic groups have shut down, unable to cover operating costs.
The Vouliagmeni association founded in 1937 by local sportsmen in the eponymous seaside town is beginning to feel the pain. Its open swimming center, for instance, costs 200,000 euros a year to maintain. The association has to also spend on travel and training for its champions. Many athletes train for six to seven hours a day, including weekends, requiring the club to cover their living expenses. It has done that through membership fees and state aid. Such grants are now all but gone.
‘Abuses’
“Last year, we lowered the budget and it is imperative that we keep cutting,” Lazarou Tigka said. “Reducing stipends to athletes and cutting personnel have been among the cuts. When athletes are forced to stop because they can’t get by, they will have to change direction, find a different job.”
Dependence on the state for jobs, pensions and social benefits has come to symbolize Greece’s ailing finances. Athletes were often given public sector jobs to support their training. Much of the spending on sports has been inefficient, says Panos Bitsaksis, general secretary for Sport.
“We need to examine the piles of money given to Greek sport in the past and if it had the result it should have,” he said. “Many athletes received salaries for positions they weren’t filling. There was abuse of privileges by athletes who were no longer active.”
Olympic Bid
Many of the 22 athletic halls built on the 15 Olympic sites for the 2004 Athens Games remain largely unused. Olympic Properties SA, the state-run agency that manages the venues built for the Olympics, is unprofitable. Multiple plans on using the venues to raise money have failed.
Culture and Tourism Minister Pavlos Yeroulanos told lawmakers in July last year that he’s pushing for a body that can document, plan, advise and regulate sports efficiently. When he took over the ministry in 2009, the same amounts could be allocated to sports Greece excels in, such as Marathons, and ones where it doesn’t, such as ice hockey, he said.
“We inherited huge problems,” he said. “The country would commit to an event which it hadn’t cleared funds for from the finance ministry in order to be able to host it.”
The Olympic Committee’s Capralos says athletes who qualify for the 2012 Greek delegation will participate.
“Preparation for the Olympics depends on finances,” he said. “When you don’t have enough money to send athletes to international events or training centers to prepare in the best possible way, of course it affects their performance.”
Not Eroded
Greece won two silver Olympic medals and two bronze ones at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That compares with 16 in Athens in 2004 -- including six gold medals -- the second-highest since it hosted the first modern Olympic Games in the Panathenaic Stadium in 1896, winning 46 medals including 10 gold ones.
“Going back in time, all the things Olympia in Greece represents will never be eroded,” University of Northampton’s Seymour said. “History and tradition won’t just be dismissed at the press of a button because of its economic difficulties, but it’s just something they will have to wrestle with.”
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