Monday, September 17, 2007

Issue 435 - Ron Dennis Would Have Lost Us The Olympics

Hi,
I hope everything is ok where you are.

I couldn't quite decide which topic to go with this week (no change there then), so I've rather sneakily decided to merge 2 together, and I've called it
'Ron Dennis Would Have Lost Us The Olympics'

'Who is Ron Dennis?' might be the first question that springs to mind, and fair enough, so here we go...

Ron Dennis is the boss of the McLaren Formula 1 team.
They were fined $100 million this week over a spying scandal in the sport.
(By the way, note the good marketing here by the governing body, there is only 1 race in the USA, and yet the fine is in dollars.
Why? Because $100 million is a better headline than £49 million that's why)

Ok, where was I..?
Oh yes, the reason the whole affair came to the attention of the governing body, was because Ron Dennis rung them up and told them!
He was effectively being blackmailed by his own driver Fernando Alonso, who had said that if he didn't get what he wanted, then damaging info on the computer would be revealed.

Dennis was having none of that, and promptly got on the phone.
This was the first he had known of the events, and he has always stated that he bases everything he does on integrity.
He says it's the most important thing to him, more so than the sport he's in, or anything else he hapens to be involved in.
That intergrity has cost his team $100 million (£49 million.)

So how does that affect the London 2012 Olympics?
Er, it doesn't, but it does tie in with a documentary I watched about the costing for the games.

There was a big hoo ha over here when the government revealed that the budget had gone from around 3 billion up to 9 billion.
This program showed documents and interviews which suggested the government knew all along that this would be the case.

Some simple facts bear this out.
When France bid for the 2008 games, they priced it at 2.5 billion.
This was with all the stadia built, plus the transport structures, plus the athletes village.
London has none of these, and yet priced their bid at not much higher for the 2012 games.

Logic red flag there...
Of course now the games have been awarded, the money has to be found, and despite a major foundation of our bid being the boost it would give to grass roots sport, the very government body with the responsibility of that grass roots development has had its' budget decimated, to find the extra money to stage the games.

Hmm...
It must be said that the TV program comes from a stable that has a reputation for being negative, and of course statistics can be manipulated, but doesn't it seem that winning the games for London was more of a kudos thing for the individuals concerned rather than a benefit for the country?

Did the people involved show the integrity that Ron Dennis did?
I suspect that had he been involved, he would have said 'this is no good', and we would have lost the games, which looks like it might not have been such a bad thing.

You know I'm a big fan of personal integrity, I talk about it in my book (link below!)
I try to live my life based on it, I think if more people did then we'd all be better for it, so it's a plus for Ron Dennis in my book.

Ok, that's it for this week - how is your own integrity level?

'Til Next Time,
Health and Happiness,
Gordon
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