Socialist-run Venezuela has been unable to replicate the Olympic glories of political bedfellows Cuba, China or the old Soviet Union. Yet there is no lack of enthusiasm among the 60 or so athletes heading to the London Olympics with the dream of adding to the South American nation’s gold medal tally of one.
No one will be cheering them louder than President Hugo Chavez, a sports-lover who has poured oil revenues into the “massification” of sport as a major plank of his self-styled revolution in Venezuela since taking power in 1999. “In socialist countries, the government is close to sport,” Venezuela’s Olympic Committee President Eduardo Alvarez told Reuters, praising Chavez’s efforts to take sport to the masses.
“Political support is a catalyst … It makes Venezuelan athletes stand out to the world,” he added. “In a different political system, where people have to pay, there’s exclusion, that’s an important difference.” Venezuela sent a record 110 athletes to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, more than twice any of its previous teams. Despite that boost in numbers, Venezuelan fans were largely disappointed: taekwondo competitor Dalia Contreras brought home the only medal, a bronze. She has since retired.
That had Chavez’s many detractors in the politically-polarized nation scoffing at the failure to turn Venezuela into an Olympic player. Critics say the president has politicized sport for his own self-aggrandizement, and claim funds have been chaotically and sometimes corruptly allocated. The Venezuelan Olympians going to London are fewer than the Beijing delegation because several large teams, including women’s softball and volleyball, failed to qualify.
Venezuela will spend around $20 million preparing athletes for London, Alvarez said at the Olympic committee’s headquarters next to a stadium in a down-at-heel Caracas district.
That pales in comparison to powerhouses like the United States, whose committee has an annual budget of roughly $150 million.
