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Legacy and Politicians
One thing that is evident is politicians want participation in sport to increase at all levels.
I live in the West Midlands. I remember the running boom of the 80's and early 90's. In my area there were lots of events. In the summer moths most weekends there would be a choice of 10k's. There were many 1/2 marathons. I remember doing the Black Country 1/2 one Sunday, the Handsworth 1/2 the next. I could have entered the Sandwell 1/2 two weeks later. Most leisure centres organised a 10k a year.
This came to an end.These were the reasons I am aware of. The police were stopped from having a presence at the events. It became more difficult to close roads and funding was stopped. The situation is different now. There are still races put on by clubs. They don't aim to attract the novice runners that Fox Hollies 10K would have. The big city 1/2 marathons, such as the Birmingham 1/2, are very expensive to enter.It is not all bad news. On Saturdays we have Park Runs. Let's hope these continue to grow and attract lots of new novice runners.
Every politician I have seen interviewed says they want to fund sport at all levels. It's very easy to say after such a successful Olympics. Lets see what happens though when they decide money needs to be saved.A few months ago they were talking about privatising forests. It could have made 100 of miles of running and cycling trails less accessible.
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Comments
I think there is a lot of opportunity for schools to use track and field better. In the US, even young kids are doing mile runs several times a week as part of the school sport programme. Here, all the blab about competitive sport being bad and making non-sporty kids feel inadequate is unhelpful. The great thing about running is that you can ignore other people, providing that you are competiting with yourself to improve your fitness and times. Rather than measuring fitness against other students, it would be better if a programme could be put together to encourage students to improve their skills and fitness compared to their own ability when starting the programme, so that they can see their improvements and track their progress. This could be in endurance, speed, ball skills, flexability, understanding of the rules etc... This is what PE teachers should be looking at anyway, so why aren't the pupils encouraged to view PE like this?
Worth thinking about in a way sheffield hosted the world student games in the early 90's and while it bombed in some ways because the local authority had to pay back the money over the next 20 years and believe they still are the infrastructure that was created still gives a return to the city. Jess Ennis and a couple of the boxer's who won gold from both sex's train there and and there has been a long term advantage to the likes of ponds forge and don valley stadium. That's a legacy to something that's not the Olympics and didn't make the news. If they can get a plan together after london 2012 there could be a real opportunity here for sport and also long term health in the uk for the next 20 years.
I agree cameron don't come across as knowing what he was talking about so let's not leave it down to him and and get off are own backsides and do it. There most be what at least a 100 difference people for various running clubs or tri clubs reading this? Plus PE teachers up and down the country and parents. The government ever Labour or tory have consistently shown themselves to be all talk on stuff like this so let's just talk to our kids and also do what else we can to get then involved? Might be a pipe dream but so where the olympics at one point.
Going back to when I was at primary school which was in the late 1960's one of the activities we did was learn to swim. After we attained a certain standard we then went on to take personnel survival tests. It invoved jumping into the water with cloths on, geting undressed in the pool, making floats out of clothes etc. We did have an annual swimming gala.
I wander what Cameron would think of it. I'm sure he would replace the personnel survival training with races every week.
Jess Ennis and a couple of the boxer's who won gold from both sex's train there and and there has been a long term advantage to the likes of ponds forge and don valley stadium.
All kids have to do this sort of stuff in Primary schools now and, thankfully, it`s well funded. It would be terrible if this lifeskill was replaced with races for the few who`ve been taught on their holidays to Grenada.