Britain has enjoyed its most
successful Olympics and Paralympics in years - testament you may think to a
training regime that has been instituted in recent years to make up for
mediocre past performances. Turning on its head the more usual cry of "Jolly
good show; getting the bronze medal was an awfully good effort". Even the
Aussies were surprised, but couldn't resist taking a swipe at the fact that
many of the gold medals were won from a "sitting position". Now then,
jealousy will get you nowhere.
There is no doubt in the minds
of the British team at least, that quite a lot of the difference in their
performance has been as a result of the availability of funding channeled from
the lottery. Funds that have been put into the building of new facilities and have
helped to defray the costs of some of the athletes who could not otherwise
afford financially to take out the necessary time for training.
So, something is clearly going
right. The facilities are better, there is time to train and so now all we need
to ensure is that the competitive spirit remains. The will to win. The British
tendency - and I am not critical of it, in fact absolutely the opposite - to be
good sports, and by and large to prefer fair play has, sadly, provided us with
a reputation for "choking" when it comes to the big events. For not
having that desire to come out on top. No single-minded determination.
Given the recent results,
then, we seem to have taken a dramatic step forward. And for the next step?
Well, why not try and bring something of the competitive spirit back into the
schoolyards. Surely, properly channeled this should be the foundation for
future generations of athletes with a will to win. To compete with the rest of
the world, who take their games seriously.
"Ah but", says a section
of the governing bodies and teachers in schools, "if we lionise successful
children on the sports fields, we are going to permanently scar those who are
less talented". I guess this means we need to bring everything down to the
lowest common denominator. Make sure nobody runs faster than the slowest person
on the track so the slowcoach feels good! Well, I bet the slowcoach doesn't
actually feel good, and knows exactly what is happening.
And now we have the
professional sports bodies joining the fray. England's Football Association has
now decreed from this season that the scores of matches played between teams of
young people must not be published, that league tables cannot be kept and that
prizes should not be awarded. The rationale? It is to allow young children to
nurture their skills without facing the pressure to win.
Look, pressure is all around
us today. The number of young adults who find the pressure of life generally to
be too much for them saddens me. They are depressed; they seek solace in binge
drinking. It's a modern phenomenon. Adults too face pressures, but I think that
perhaps those of us who have reached a certain age are better equipped to deal
with it, than the younger generation.
I know I'm getting old and
crotchety. Policemen are looking very young, a sure sign of old age, and I am
much better at remembering what I did as a kid than what I had for lunch
yesterday, but please - if this is where Britain is headed, then get used to
being the perennial runners-up. Or, teach children properly, and at an early
age, that an element of competition is healthy, and that while you may not be a
good runner yourself, the good runner may not be good at other things.
The best thing Britain can do, to honour the present breed of Olympian, is start to nurture their successors.
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