OK, so the Olympics are over and we’re into the endless analysis by our endlessly illogical media who wouldn’t recognise either truth or rationality if it turned into a dog and bit them in the street. Usually, I ignore all this, but this time it’s got my heckles up. Time to man up before the whole of the £9b (just enough to cover two months’ worth of our current trade deficit by the way) gets frittered away into distant memory.
Firstly, if our success at elite sport were an argument for putting more money into school sports, then our school sports must already be in fine shape, since we won more medals per head of capita than an other major nation. Clearly – as anyone who cares to go along and look will find out – school sports are not okay, therefore trying to make this connection is plain dumb.
If you want more evidence of this, you only have to consider the fact that while the lottery has been pouring money into elite sports in the last ten years, our performance at the top level has gone up, while schools have been selling off playing fields and generally replacing school sports with any cheap alternative they can that meets government targets.
Secondly, the fact that we won more medals per head of capita than an other major nation is not a good argument for putting more money into elite sport. In fact, it suggests the opposite: that we’re spending money on elite success to cover the real facts about our economic woes, just like Soviet Russia and East Germany did twenty-five years ago. Every pound we put into elite sport has one of three effects a) takes a pound away from grass roots sports spending, or b) increases the national debt, or c) takes another pound out of the taxpayer’s pocket. At the moment, I suggest it’s mainly a).
Thirdly, we have been spending money on elite sports for a decade, has it had any impact on the health of the nation? Yes, childhood obesity is up and lots of kids are playing Olympic sports on the WII.
On a slightly different note, I’ve also seen the Post-Olympic debate take on a typically British ‘class’ theme. Apparently a very high proportion of medal winners went to private school. This is put forward as evidence that sports facilities in state schools are inadequate. This is rubbish. Sports facilities in state schools are inadequate, but the reason why so many medal winners come from public schools is that public schools hand out sports scholarships to good young athletes in a bid to boost the schools’ marketing profile. It’s not surprising that they pick the ones most likely to go on to international sporting success, and not surprising either that these students accept the scholarships because those schools have – in general – a much higher academic standard.
Don’t get me wrong, I think there are arguments for funding elite sports, but in the post Olympic debate, none of those arguments seem to be in my newspaper, or on my radio or TV.
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Besides the debate on funding and sports field sales, the 2012 Olympic Games have opened up discussion on competitive versus co-operative sports. (Tactics, for instance, in cycling.) At one stage many schools banned competitive sports and teachers encouraged children to look only at their own performances and to move their targets on after each success.. Parents and teachers however instinctively ignored the idealism behind this.
Have you any views on this, Forged Truth?
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Here’s the thing, Landofbrokenpromises, my daughter went to a big school with lots of sports facilities and very competitive sports teams. The result was that a few kids did very well at various sports and got into school teams. Most of the pupils did not and they weren’t interested in any sports despite the facilities. Later, she moved to a different school with barely enough kids to make up the school teams. The sports facilities were generally lousy, but all the kids made the school team, and my daughter suddenly loved sport. That’s not to say, she was any good at it, but she ran around and had a much healthier life, which I think is the point.
My own school, a traditional old boys’ grammar, had a fearsome reputation as a rugby playing colossus. Rugby was an indicator of personality. You weren’t a team player or a leader if you didn’t make the rugby team and you weren’t even considered for any of the school positions. On the schools roll of honour, there wasn’t one head boy going back to 1901 who hadn’t also been in the 1st XV. My year produced two Oxbridge scholars (the most the school had had in 40 years), a future editor of the Financial Times and the man who went on to found Pizza Express. None of them made the rugby team. The guy who was head boy (and captian of the rugby team) flunked his ‘A’ levels. I met him years later, dressed as a clown outside the local branch of McDonalds.
What are we to make of these two anecdotes? Firstly, I think we should realise that there is a difference between elite sport and participation in competitive sports. Whilst elite athletes might be useful as role models, they aren’t a good indicator that all is well at the lower levels. Secondly, there’s a dangerous halo around successful athletes. If Lord Coe wasn’t already ‘Lord’ Coe, he’d be a shoe-in for the next PM.
Having said all that, actually competing in sports at whatever level, has made my daughter fitter, healthier and more appreciative of what it means to win and lose. I don’t think she could ever have got that from sport in a non-competitive environment (but that doesn’t mean we need an environment in which winning and losing is everything).
I think we just need to keep a little bit of a sense of proportion and remember what the goal is.
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