Is UK Sport truly seeking ‘to inspire the nation’, or just a select middle-class few?
MY report this week on the near volcanic response from Badminton Scotland’s top official to the latest funding decision by UK Sport drew a typically mischievous response from an old colleague.
A septuagenarian former history teacher, who has also long been involved in sports writing, emailed me to observe: “More power to your elbow . . . There is much talk about signs of fascism in Trump’s politics. No need to look so far when Liz Nichols comes out with: ‘It is uncompromisingly focused . . . to pursue the ambition . . . to inspire the nation’. Straight from Mussolini’s play-book.”
His tongue was doubtless in his cheek, but since the allocation of public money to sport can surely only be justified if a common good derives from it, there is a serious point when it comes to the language being used by those seeking to justify the obsession with silverware that is dominating the justifications of their decision-making, because there are fundamental flaws in the logic behind such arguments.
First and foremost, the contention that winning medals is the most effective way of getting youngsters to become more active was dubious from the moment it was used as a cornerstone of the London Olympic bid and was further undermined by the evidence and analysis offered by a combination of elite sportspeople, academics, parents and children interviewed in the course of John Beattie’s “Medal Myth” television programme that was broadcast at the turn of the year.
However, even if we are to accept that there is any sort of correlation between medal success and public health, another point made in that programme and frequently in the years since billions were spent on staging the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games in the UK, is that a disturbingly disproportionate number of the medals accrued were won by products of private schools and those state schools with more affluent catchment areas.
A self-perpetuating cycle was consequently set in motion whereby money was ploughed into those sports played predominantly in the UK by the wealthier middle classes in order to win medals in sports that are not seriously contested by vast sections of the world’s population.
Support is given to sports that can make the best cases that it is probable that they will return from an Olympic Games with medals, rather than those for who it is possible that they will do so.
In quite a few cases they are the sports in which reliance on human beings, with all their frailties, can be compensated by acquisition of the most expensive machinery for either competition or training, whether that be a superior bicycle, boat or even horse, the sort of sports to which only an elite few are introduced.
In others money is given to sports in which many more medals are available. Consequently, competitors who as individuals are exceedingly unlikely to win a medal, are in many cases favoured ahead of those playing in teams that have a very real possibility of winning a medal, but cannot in all conscience claim it is probable that they will do so.
Naturally the sports that have been supported and have won medals are, in turn, now seen as those in which Britain is most likely to be successful.
UK Sport’s philosophy means it then follows that an ever larger proportion of public money will be allocated to those sports, and all the indicators are that instead of benefiting the widest possible cross-section of the population, that is instead creating a system where wealthier parents are giving their youngsters a head start into activities where they will have the best chance of having their ambitions subsidised.
By contrast, there was a huge row a few years ago when basketball, a sport invented by a Scotsman but that has produced some of the most iconic black sporting role models of our times – the likes of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James, Kareem Abdul Jabbar to name but a few – had its funding withdrawn.
That was the precursor to what we saw this week when those who control the purse strings confirmed that the British agencies promoting one of the world’s most popular sports, and can be made readily available in any community, was no longer to be promoted at elite level hereabouts in a year that will see the likes of China’s Lin Dan and Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei – whose fame matches that of Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic in Asia even if they are relatively unknown in this country – play in Glasgow at a World Championships.
Just supposing UK Sport is right in thinking that elite-level success is the best tool to use to inspire young people to get active, then the correlation between the sports they are interested in and how public money is invested inevitably sends out signals in terms of which of our youngsters are more valued.
It’s in that context, with Britain’s top badminton singles player Raj Ouseph, the son of Indian immigrants, having recently moved into the world’s top 10 – making him a serious medal prospect in three years’ time – that the messages emanating from a predominantly white, middle-class establishment need to be re-considered if we are truly looking “to inspire the nation.”
A self-perpetuating cycle was set in motion whereby money was ploughed into those sports played bythe wealthier middle classes