Taiwan’s medal count at the Beijing Olympics was its lowest in 24 years. Taiwan’s medal totals have ranked 49th place, 61st place, 58th place, 31st place and 79th place respectively at each of the Summer Olympics between 1994 and this year. Now that the Taiwanese delegation has come home, they will have to think long and hard about what has gone wrong.
The government should urgently take action to improve the country’s poor sports environment. Rome was not built in a day, nor can we expect our ills to be cured overnight. People must realize that reform in sports has to start from the grassroots. It will take a long time — quite possibly a decade or more — to see results. The experience of the next Olympic host country — the UK — is a case in point.
During the 1980s, the British government under prime minister Margaret Thatcher was committed to cutting the budget deficit. Sports were not a focal point of government policy at the time, and the development of sports suffered from cuts in local government spending.
In 1990, John Major succeeded Thatcher as prime minister. Major, a great cricket enthusiast, saw clearly that the government’s laissez-faire attitude was damaging Britain’s sporting prospects. Starting in 1991, the government built up funding and personnel, with the aim of improving the UK’s international standing at the 2000 Olympics in Athens. In the intervening period, British sports went through a winter of discontent.
At the Atlanta Games, the country’s medal ratings fell to 36th place. Still, Major’s government kept with the program and the fruits of its efforts were harvested by the Labour government that followed. Britain’s medal score was 10th overall at the 2000 Olympics, and the same again in 2004. The Labour government made still greater efforts and the British team climbed to fourth place in the Beijing Games. The UK’s resurgence from 36th place to fourth in just 12 years is a truly remarkable achievement.
Britain’s sporting reforms have brought about a fundamental change in the health of the sports sector. The three main factors contributing to this transformation have been firm targets, generous funding and active government participation. Targets for results in competitions have been set at least 10 years in advance. For example, the 2002 government white paper entitled “Game Plan” set target scores for 2015.
With regard to finance, in addition to existing national and local government funding, the 1993 National Lottery Act stipulated that 20 percent of national lottery earnings should be allocated to sports development. Although the figure was later reduced to 9 percent, funding from the lottery still amounts to the equivalent of hundreds of millions of New Taiwan dollars — a substantial shot in the arm for British sports.
The British government also set up an agency to teach people how to apply for funding, while at the same time demanding transparency, initiative, accessibility and efficiency from organizations that receive public funds. The British government offers active guidance in sporting affairs. It has promoted the incorporation of sporting bodies, taking on the task of coordination between NGOs governing different sports and encouraging them to pool resources or combine, while avoiding direct political interference.
The government has also set up scoreboards for success in sports competitions, and provides centralized training programs for competitors in international events.
At the same time, it actively pursues the right to host big international events, setting up cross-departmental action teams drawing on central, local and non-governmental resources to work on bids. London’s successful bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics is a case in point.
Taiwan’s disappointing results in this year’s Olympics show that the way we manage sports still leaves much room for improvement. We have no long-term strategy for international competitions. While there is insufficient funding for sports, there is at the same time too much duplication in organization and leadership, with little effort to consolidate.
Faced with such problems, what is needed is the determination to reform the entire system, and the patience to wait for the results. It has been more than a decade since the British sowed the seeds of deep-reaching reform, and now they are reaping the benefits. Let’s hope our government will keep in mind the poor results of this year’s Games and apply the lessons learned.
If we start work now on patiently fostering the next generation of athletes, we can expect to see much better results in 10 year’s time.
Han Pao-chung is a lecturer in liberal education at National Central University.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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