Danes show little bit of thought can build lasting legacy
As a performance, it was every bit as notable as his portrayal of the Irish gangster Tom Reagan in Miller’s Crossing or the criminal ringleader Dean Keaton in The Usual Suspects and, like all great performances, it has lingered in the mind long after its deliverance.
Byrne was right to bark but he missed the most salient point. If The Gathering isn’t a shakedown of Irish Americans then what exactly is it?
We’ve been hearing about such delights as the Bog Snorkelling Championships in Castleblaney and the Left Hand Festival in Mullingar but the whole thing lacks anything like a central theme or event that people can look at and think ‘Ah!’ It’s a catchphrase without a catch. A brain-wave without a beating heart or soul.
Actually, it’s worse than that. It’s a comet that will streak briefly across the sky, an ephemeral concept whose trail will be impossible to map in years to come, and the pity of it is that, in sport, we possess a tailor-made tapestry on which to weave an infinitely more enduring legacy for the country’s finances, health and social well-being.
Our cousins in the UK get it. Last week, UK Sport announced plans to create a campaign that would build on the city’s Olympic legacy by bringing 36 World and European Championships — and 70 international tournaments in total — to the country and showed how serious they were by fronting up £27m (€21m) to get the job done.
They’re calling it the Gold Series and have already identified events as diverse as the 2017 Paralympics Athletics World Championship, the semi-finals and final of football’s European Championships in 2020, the Hockey World Cup, the 2016 Track Cycling World Championships and the European Swimming Championships.
All going according to plan, they will attract 2.5m extra visitors to the UK to watch high-class sport over the next decade or so and, before you point out the obvious, let us do it for you by accepting we have no Olympic infrastructure or legacy on which to lean and a lot less money than our neighbours.
Which is why we should look further north — and east — to a nondescript office in the small town of Brondby (pop. 33,831) on Denmark’s easternmost island where five people have been beavering away at making the northern European country an unlikely global centre for world-class sports entertainment and tourism.
Sport Event Denmark was set up seven years ago by the Danish government, the national Olympic Committee and the Sports Confederation of Denmark to attract and organise major sports events and conferences in the understanding that it would a) develop sport in the country and b) provide a welcome shot in the arm for the tourist industry.
How have they done? Pretty good.
Between March 2005 and last month, the Danes played host to 261 international sporting events. That is an average of almost three per month in a country where the population is roughly half-a-million less than that which inhabits this island and they incorporated everything from the Uefa U21 European Championship and the UCI Road World Championships last year to the Billiards 3-Cushion European Championship in 2009 and the 2011 FIM Sidecar Motocross World Championship.
No event is considered too small or obscure. They are equal opportunity hosts and among the checklist for the years to come are the Men’s European Handball Championship, the Badminton World Championship and the World Half Marathon Championship and they do it by going the extra mile to secure the gigs and then stretching a step further once they get them.
Last month, Sport Event Denmark received the award for best marketing event at the prestigious Sports Events Management Awards for a viral marketing campaign used in promoting the U21 Euros and the Road Cycling events last year. It was praised for its ability to promote the competitions, the sports and the cities in which they were held.
Everyone a winner, basically.
Evidence of a willingness to think outside the box was even more apparent last May when the Giro D’Italia began in Central Jutland — which meant 22 teams, 198 riders, something similar in the amount of officials, 700 volunteers and an estimated 250,000 spectators all passing through a succession of picturesque Danish towns and stunning natural scenery, all of it beamed by TV to approximately 350m people in 165 different countries.
It’s only 14 years since the 1998 edition of the Tour de France got rolling in Dublin, and the years since have seen standout successes such as the 2003 Special Olympics and the Ryder Cup at the K Club three years later, but the vision required to emulate the consistent success of the Danes simply hasn’t been in evidence here.
There have been a few lone voices crying out to government ministers to embrace the Danish model but the penny has never dropped with politicians and civil servants bent on erasing cents and euros from the public spend while, in Brondby, three women and two men continue to bring the world to Denmark.
Email: Brendan.obrien@examiner.ie
Twitter: @Rackob
