The July before last, I was lucky enough to visit the Lee Valley White Water Centre as it played host to an exciting Olympic canoe slalom competition.

I was back in London's northern suburbs last week as the centre reopened for a 2014 season that includes three days of World Cup action, following completion of a £6.3 million post-Olympic development project.

Now incorporating GB Canoeing's slalom national performance centre, it is a Rolls-Royce facility and no mistake, described by Albert Woods, the British Canoe Union chairman, as "the best slalom venue in the world".

The elite British canoeists who turned out for the reopening are plainly highly appreciative and thrilled to bits.

London 2012 silver medallist Richard Hounslow said the centre was being "future-proofed" and predicted that GB Canoeing would be there for years to come.

Given that it also affords the opportunity for families in the densely-populated south-east of England to enjoy thrilling white-water rafting rides without breaking the bank and may attract talented youngsters into the sport, this looks like an exciting example of Olympic legacy in action. Right?

The Lee Valley White Water Centre does, up to a point, look like an exciting example of Olympic legacy in action ©Getty Images



Well, up to a point. I do think the London 2012 project has been extremely well thought-through and executed.

As such, it probably represents as good an example of white-water legacy planning as we are ever likely to see.

But I still wonder about the wisdom of an Olympic factory that all but decrees that one of these expensive marvels of modern engineering should be erected somewhere in the world every four years.

Unlike many Olympic sports, that can take place in multi-purpose venues such as exhibition centres, which are relatively cheap to build and easy to find post-Games uses for, a canoe slalom course is extremely specialised.

It is also energy-intensive: as a man from the Atkins engineering and design consultancy once explained to me, it requires 15 cubic metres a second of water to be pumped through the course.

That is like 60 bath-fulls every second of an event, which must make for substantial running costs.

Water is not something the course is lacking, needing plenty to keep it ticking over ©Getty Images



Now London's dense, affluent population means that the Lee Valley centre can probably count on high demand.

But not every Olympic host will come with such a promising post-Games market to tap; it is hard to imagine that Rio will, for example, though Tokyo may be better placed.

Even London would be hard-pressed to make such a facility pay, at least in its current format incorporating the elite performance centre, if the capital cost of building it had to be financed and repaid.

Shaun Dawson, chief executive of the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, which owns and runs the new centre, was kind enough to walk me through the business plan when we found a quiet corner.

The income target is put at £2.5 million ($4.1 million/€3 million) a year, after a couple of seasons getting up to speed, which should be enough to allow a small surplus.

He says the income in 2013, even before the new development was finished, was around £1.4 million ($2.3 million/€1.6 million), split approximately 70:30 between the general public and the corporate sector.

Based on this, and the superb quality of the development, that £2.5 million figure looks eminently attainable.

Can such facilities in other Olympic host citites like Beijing really make them financially viable post-Games? ©Getty Images



Incidentally, in the way of these things, Dawson says the centre has discovered an unexpected supplementary market in the emergency services, who appreciate Lee Valley as a training venue partly because they know the water is clean.

The centre's business planners, however, don't have to worry about repaying the capital cost of constructing the centre, which now stands at some £37 million ($61 million/€44 million).

Imagine if, instead of being anted up mainly by a variety of public bodies, this money had had to be borrowed at, say, five per cent a year and repaid over, say, 20 years.

According to my back-of-envelope arithmetic, the year one financing cost would have been £3.7 million ($6.1 million/€4.4 million), or comfortably more than expected annual income even when the centre is up to full speed.

One way of justifying this gift to canoeing from a grateful nation is to say that it was a small part of the investment in bringing the Olympic and Paralympic Games to Britain and that the Games put the country in the global spotlight in a very positive way, generating incalculable millions in spin-off benefits.

I'd largely go along with that.

However, the impact of the Games would have been just as great with or without slalom canoeing.

In the case of Lee Valley, I don't think this is an issue since, if you are prepared to swallow the capital cost, the centre will most probably be able to, as the money men say, "wash its face": this looks very unlikely to become known as the White Elephant off junction 25 of the M25 motorway.

But what about Athens, or Rio, or even Beijing? Would the white-water facilities in these Olympic cities be able to present similarly convincing plans to cover their operating costs over an extended period while enriching the lives of a significant cross-section of the local populations?

This is why, though I much enjoy watching it, I have come to wonder more if slalom canoeing should really be part of the Olympic Games than, say, taekwondo or archery, which do not – or should not – leave behind costly and specialised facilities in places where they are not necessarily needed.

Of course, development of a capability to manufacture portable canoe slalom courses would address this issue.

Is such a concept feasible? Does such a thing already exist?

Given the mounting pressure on mega-event organisers to demonstrate a responsible attitude towards long-term legacy and the sensible use of resources, it may be an idea whose time has come.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.