UK Government's
"Sport For Everyone" Initiative
Celebrates Success
Karen Bradley, the UK
Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media
and Sport, today celebrated the success of the
government’s “Sport for Everyone”
initiative with a reception at Westminster.
The initiative arose from a
report published by her department in early 2013
which looked at sport participation in the UK.
The report revealed that, despite the success of
the London 2012 Olympics, declining numbers of
non-disabled people were taking part in sporting
activities.
The research highlighted
that Paralympians were acting as an inspiration
for disabled people to increasingly engage in
sport, but that the success of our non-disabled
athletes was having exactly the opposite effect
on those without disabilities.
The 2013 report went on to
examine the reasons behind the radically
different attitudes to sport participation
exhibited by disabled and non-disabled people.
The researchers concluded that this disparity was
primarily related to the very different way that
parasport was structured when compared to
conventional competition.
Parasport is founded on the
principle of classification. Athletes competing
in parasports have, by definition, an impairment
that leads to a competitive disadvantage. The
classification system aims to compensate for the
impact of any impairment such that the success of
competitors is based on their skill, fitness,
determination, and all the other positive
characteristics honed by competition –
rather than by the effects of their disabilities.
The 2013 report noted that
non-parasports had no such process. The key
consequence of this for conventional sport was
summarised by a typical club athlete who was
interviewed for the 2013 report.
‘People like me have
no chance of getting anywhere in modern sport,’
the athlete lamented. ‘Back in the days when
Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four minute
mile, anybody with a bit of determination could
have tried to copy him. Roger Bannister obviously
trained hard, but his training programme wouldn’t
have been beyond the capabilities of any
dedicated runner of that period.
‘You’ve only got
to look at Mo Farah to see that those days are
long gone. He had to find an exceptional trainer
in a foreign country and pursue his preparations,
away from his family, with a degree of dedicated
professionalism and sacrifice that members of the
armed forces or astronauts would recognise. Mo’s
had to exhibit nearly super-human commitment to
his sport to achieve all that he has. Undertaking
anything even remotely similar is totally
unrealistic for most of us, so why would we even
try to compete?’
The 2013 report went on to
speculate that this difference between parasport
and conventional sport might also contribute to
the almost total lack of performance enhancing
drugs in parasport. It noted that parasport
competitors mainly believed, in common with Roger
Bannister in 1954, that they could win if they
tried hard enough. Many non-disabled athletes, in
contrast, believed they could never win any
significant competition by simply doing their
best.
It was the above conclusion
that led to the critical innovation within the
government’s “Sport for Everyone”
initiative. This was the implementation of a
classification system for non-disabled athletes.
George Plumpton, world 100
meters record holder in the non-disabled, Z8
category, told reporters at the Westminster
reception how the new classification system had
inspired him to athletic success.
‘The Z8 category is
for those athletes, like me, who are well outside
Department of Health recommendations on weight,
alcohol consumption, diet and exercise,’ he
explained to journalists. ‘I can’t be
asked to put down my burger, for example, stand
up and walk across the room to get the TV
controller.
‘For that reason,
prior to the new classification system, I’d
always assumed that sport wasn’t for me. It
was wonderful, therefore, when the new athletics
classification process allowed me to compete on
equal terms with similar athletes at the recent
“Sport for Everyone” Games in
Manchester. I not only won gold for my country
but also became the Z8 100 metres world record
holder with a time of 25 minutes and 45.972
seconds.
‘I’m hoping for
even greater success at next year’s “Sport
for Everyone” World Championships in Toronto,’
he added. ‘I’m sure that several
minutes could have been trimmed from my time in
Manchester if those of us in the final hadn’t
wandered off for a kebab and a pint half way
through the race. If I can be bothered, I might
try to be more focussed in Toronto.’
In her speech at the
Westminster reception, Karen Bradley emphasised
that “Sport for Everyone” meant exactly
what it said. Athletes did not have to be in
George Plumpton’s Z8 category to achieve
success.
‘The Y6 category, for
example,’ she explained, ‘provides
opportunities for those who are reasonably
healthy but who are simply too unmotivated to
exert very much effort. As we all know, another
British athlete, John Idleman, won silver in the
Y6 400 meters in Manchester in a UK record time
of 4 days, 6 hours, 24 minutes and 32.658 seconds.
He might even have achieved gold,’ she added,
‘had he not still been in bed in Birmingham
when the starting gun had been fired. I would
have asked him to say a few words now about his
achievement, but it appears that he hasn’t
arrived here as yet.’
Despite the outstanding
success of the “Sport for Everyone”
initiative, it has not been without controversy.
In particular, some athletes have been accused of
overstating their lack of fitness and/or absence
of commitment in order to be assigned to an
“easier” classification group.
George Plumpton, himself,
was the subject of one such allegation when he
was secretly filmed by an undercover Sun
journalist while walking across a room to
retrieve a TV remote. The subsequent
investigation by the sport’s governing body,
however, concluded that the remote was near his
telephone, and George had been compelled to walk
in that direction, anyway, in order to phone for
another takeaway.
‘The government hopes
that classification for everyone in all sports
might ultimately replace non-classified entry to
competitions,’ concluded Karen Bradley.
‘Many of us certainly believe that such a
move would end the pathologically competitive
behaviours that we now witness in sport and, in
addition, provide much more fun for everyone.’
|
