New research shows four out of ten Britons uninspired by recent Olympics

July 5, 2012 - PRLog -- London, July 05 2012: With just three weeks to go until the London Olympics, whose slogan is to ‘inspire a generation’, a new Ipsos MORI poll on behalf of VykeMobile.com* reveals that  four out of ten British adults (aged 16 to 64) say they have not been inspired by recent summer Olympics.  The survey also shows that just under a quarter of those interviewed say the same of Olympic athletes including many of the acknowledged all-time greats.
Survey respondents were asked to rank the eight most inspirational summer Olympics since Moscow in 1980 and then rank the most inspirational British Olympians of recent times as well as the most inspirational Olympians of all nationalities of all time.  
Sydney (at 11%) and Beijing (10%) top the list of inspirational summer games. Barcelona (6%) was next with the five others barely getting a mention.  A third, 34%, said they do not find ‘any Olympics’ inspirational and 6% said ‘none of these’, making four out 10 adults saying they were not inspired.  Another 28% say they ‘don’t know’ – so that almost seven out of 10 said they are either not inspired by any recent games or have no opinion.  Fewer Londoners (24%) said they did not feel inspired than did those in Wales (41%) and Scotland (45%).
Oarsman Sir Steve Redgrave, tops the ranking of ‘most inspirational’ British athletes from a list of 11 leading medal winners of recent times.  Decathlon champion Daley Thompson and middle distance runner Kelly Holmes tie for second place followed by cyclist Sir Christopher Hoy.  Sebastian Coe, now Lord Coe and in charge of the London games, ranks fifth, only marginally ahead of sprinter Linford Christie, who was controversially banned from Olympic competition in 1999 for alleged use of a performance enhancing substance.  
Sir Steve and Thompson also top the ranking of all-time ‘most inspirational’ Olympians of any nationality with the African-American sprinter and jumper Jesse Owens, who infuriated Hitler by winning four gold medals at the Berlin games in 1936, in third place.  They head a list of 20 acknowledged, all-time greats followed in the rankings by US track and field star Carl Lewis, swimmers Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz and Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci.
A quarter (23%) of respondents, echo the finding of a lack of inspiration in any Olympic games by saying that they are not inspired by any Olympic athlete.  If the ‘don’t knows’ and ‘none of these’ are included this proportion rises to just over half of all respondents.
In an entirely separate on-line survey VykeMobile.com customers around the world nominated Jamaican runner Usain Bolt as their most inspirational Olympic athlete.
Commenting on its Ipsos MORI survey, VykeMobile.com Chief Executive Tore Hellebo said:  
“Despite the surprising lack of inspiration for the previous Olympics, there are expected to be almost 300,000 overseas visitors in London for the games and we estimate that they’ll spend at least £16.6m1 on phone calls home, mostly from mobiles.  If they all used freely available Wi-Fi calling apps like ours on their smartphones we believe that they could cut this bill by a massive £51 each to help cover their costs of accommodation, eating out and travel.  Now that’s inspirational!”
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