this is one of the reasons for the eye rolling...

Australia won 14 gold medals at the Olympic Games.

Yay.

This is how much it cost in government funding for every medal: $16.7 million.

Yay?!

I hate to rain on the parade, but isn't that figure a bit outrageous in a world filled with poverty and injustice?

And to those people who claim our poor showing in the Olympics means the government should fund our sports people even more (surely they are forgetting our small population - in terms of medals per capita we've done pretty well. Or maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better... national pride and all that.) I have this to say:

Millennium Development Goals

The money we spent on the Olympics had the potential to supply millions of people with mosquito nets to prevent them from contracting malaria. Or fund the establishment of health clinics. Or reduce maternal and infant mortality.

Go figure.