When I speak of Sport in Britain, obviously I'm excluding football, as the leading participants don't see it as a sport so why should we? There was an interesting point made on BBC Breakfast today by a member of the British gymnastics team (Silver medallists who got Bronze). He said that since Louis (Smith) won Bronze in Beijing, funding for his sport had increased and this had really helped.
So, after this increase in funding Britain gets a medal in his sport for the first time in a hundred years. For me there is another way of looking at that and of course it is that clearly a lack of funding is holding back sport in this country, the talent exists we just can't find it and develop it. This is the result of two things working together; a lack of leadership from politicians and a lack of money from massively rich corporations.
The cosy and largely corrupt relationships between Ministers and business usually mean higher taxes due to incompetence and inattention, high paying sinecures for the politicians and higher prices for consumers. In sport it means people who already work hard at their training have to have a job as well, only have access to (usually substandard) facilities in the early hours and often, nowhere near where they live.
We've seen what happens when the will is there (the Olympic facilities) so it is clear it is just that, once again our politicians really, really don't care about anyone but themselves. Remember, the arch bluster-over-substance merchant Blair 'remained neutral' over whether to bring the Games here or not. That is the level of commitment; even a wuckfit chancer, basing his politics on spin (lies) and PR won't support our athletes.
No comments:
Post a Comment