Ashamed to be British

[Oldman]

The Winter Olympics is over, and once again Britain underachieved at a major sports competition. The Team GB boss said the Games was a great success for our country. One silver medal, what a joke, what aload of bull-shitt.

For a considered statement by the GB Chef de Mission see today's Daily Telegraph or http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.j ... sport.html [this may not be accessible in due course]

[SeanC]

Didsco wrote:

"If sport is so important to us, and if sports is something we are so passionate about, why can't we set in place a decent structure from bottom to top to achieve world class success. "

Didsco, reading your post is like listening to my wife! She's a PE teacher and is currently teaching the A level group about the Olympics. I get the lesson sometimes as part of her lesson prep, now I can't say she always has my full attention but it normally goes something like this:

"The British sport system is unique in the world. Governing bodies are characterised by an amateur volunteer culture. The funding system is ad hoc. Given this background it's a wonder we win any medals at all."

So you get a random amount of money one year and none the next, seems to bear out what she says.

But isn't this an orienteering forum? Lets assume orienteering makes the olympics in 2012. How do we win gold at the 2012 olympics at Epping Forest? How do we even get enough juniors to make a future team? (there are only 11 juniors entered for Westerham on sunday, though late entries are still available please contact the organiser )

[Adventure Racer]

So Australia finishes with 1 gold (moguls) and 1 bronze medal (aerials).
with definately worse training opportunities than GB.

Apart from the fact the moguls guy is Canadian as somebody else pointed out, so not a product of the Australian system, you do actually have a lot more ski resorts than Britain does, and definitely a lot more reliable snow. Given that that's what you need to develop skiers, then your facilities are a lot better than here.

In any case, when we're talking one or two medals then it all gets a bit random and tends to be less to do with the system, and more to do with who comes through at any one time. Had Dale decided to defect to the UK, we'd have had 2 medals - had a couple of women not made small mistakes in the skeleton, we'd have had none.

I know the guy who won the moguls is a millionaire.

Yeah, made through his own internet company which provides pop-up ad services. So all round a rather irritating bloke.

[Domhnull Mor]

Always good to see someone with a deep passion for a subject. I must say, after also experiencing the Swedish results in the Olympics, although I wouldn't go as far as Dids, I know what nationality I would rather be at the moment, even if most of the attention (all?) is on the ice-hockey (men's) team.

I have always wondered where folk in the more "minor" sports get their motivation from. At home it is not uncommon for even gold medal winners to be totally ignored and/or lambasted by the press after winning even major events. Funding is awarded haphazardly and infrastructure support fleating. Nice new arenas but maintenance afterwards? Even here in Sweden, the curling teams got a deal of bad press (possibly justified in the case of the men) but when the women won the gold medal it became another notch on the Swedish Olympic staff. I doubt there would be so much made of it though if not for the hockey gold...

Having heard the comments about the British commentators, I now appreciate how lucky I have been with the Swedish commentators, most of whom have been knowledgable and articulate. It makes a big difference to the viewer in understanding the efforts the competitors have had to put in, adds interest to viewing new sports and helps understanding of unfamiliar rules. Actually, a guy in my brother's class at school (in Scotland) was doing the Swedish commentary for the curling on Eurosport.

However, turning to orienteering, what many people may not realise is that ski-orienteering was actually a demonstration sport at the Nagano Olympics (I happen to know two people who were there). Obviously, though, it didn't get in as a competition sport in later ganes. Ski-o in Sweden is managed by the national skiing federation (not the o-federation) and so obviously stands in the shadow of cross-country and alpine skiing. This is also apparent in the funding... not much. The European Championships took place in Russia last week with great success for the Swedish men (first four places in one event). If this had been an Olympic event then they would (might?) have made the headlines. As it is, they made the results page in the local paper. So what motivates them? I can't answer that one but whatever it is, it should be bottled and exported to the UK.

Funding, motivation, public and media support (and coverage) go hand-in-hand. All these are required for success to be achieved but not necessarily to the same extent for everyone.

A final point to note is that the Swedish ice hockey players (although cynics may see it as playing to the gallery) have donated their win bonuses to youth development in the sport. However, the Canadian speed skater who decided to donate her entire savings to a charity that offers children the chance to participate in sport beats them all. Winners breed winners.....

[Adventure Racer]

talking to various Norwegians in Geilo (including the father of the current Norwegian Biathlon under 14 champion), they told me that the orienteers turn to biathlon in the winter (or is it biathlon types turn to orienteering in the summer?).

Not quite biathlon, but one of the top M18s in the UK is also a very good XC skier.

[RJ]

I place a lot of the blame on Sky Sports channels. It is so easy to sit in an armchair and be entertained by sport, all day long, with a myriad of sports. The commentators even attempt to involve us in the competition by saying that WE are in with a chance of a medal here!

As awk alluded to..... you have to have a large base to your pyramid if you are going to have an elite cream at the top. The government are certainly moving in the direction of greater participation.

Using O..... we need thousands more competing at the bottom of the pile... then we will create more and better elite competitors. Then we will have/get the funding to take them to medals. With the relatively small participation numbers that O has at the moment we do/have done surprisingly well.... Bilbo, Yvette, Jamie, Heather, Matt, Scott, Helen, Alison, Mhairi et al.

[PKJ]

Medal potential is the only funding criterion that makes sense for 2012. So says Steve Cram (or possibly his sub-editor)
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/london2012/ ... 83,00.html

So, it may come down to medals per £m. Which isn't necessarily the same thing as excellence - pick sports where there are a lot of medals up for grabs and little strength in depth. In some ways 14th in skiing is a bigger achievement than 2nd in skeleton bob, but I can't see a politician or sports administrator saying so.

Don't really understand the 'ashamed' bit. I was much more embarrassed to be British in the days of Eddie the Eagle.

[Adventure Racer]

The question is, how do you ever get into a position to win a medal without having come 14th or 15th before? The supplementary being, should we not bother sending more than 2 or 3 people to the winter olympics, as that's all we have who are realistic medal hopes? The games would be rather a sad and empty event if every country took that policy!

[King Penguin]

From comments I've heard via another sport the Brtish government and funding authorities would rather have no-one British on the results list than people well down the list.
As AR says, if every country took this approach there'd be no international competitions.
If you are not willing to send the up-and-coming with potential to events so they can get big event experience how can you expect to ever get amongst the medals ?

[Meat Market]

Its the same in every walk of life sadly, I wish the British government would create enough funding for our talented chemical physicists but at the moment it looks like if im going to get in a job (not academic research) in what i WANT to do (ie materials chemistry) ill have to go to germany or california, not bad things for me personally! Personally i don't think the current policy of us becoming a nation of call centre operators is terribly exciting or fulfilling our potential.

[bedders]

Not quite biathlon, but one of the top M18s in the UK is also a very good XC skier.

Yes one...just one, thats hardly impressive now is it?

[pyrat]

Im proud to be Scottish. Such a great land with a great heritage of whisky, SAS troops, inventors and vast areas of mountainous terrain.

[brooner]

Personally i don't think the current policy of us becoming a nation of call centre operators is terribly exciting or fulfilling our potential.

i thought that was india?

From comments I've heard via another sport the Brtish government and funding authorities would rather have no-one British on the results list than people well down the list.

this is quite frankly ridiculous. Sure you need to have some means of measuring the success of your funding, but as has been said above, you can't instantly arrive at the top without having climbed there from somewhere.

Obviously it depends on what they're measuring for, but for sport in general someone representing their country and finishing down the results is surely better than having nobody competiting at all.

[DIDSCO]

Its fun that I've caused alot of debate...that was the aim

But sport doesn't end at the 2012 olympics, what about 2014, 2016.......its the long long term we need to think about. Serious changes need to be made to the whole structure of British sport (and health) development. We need to think about the whole system from a 4 year old through to a 29 year old elite athlete. If we do that we'll be winners, and winners for a long time!

Roll on the World Cup in football and the World Champs in Orienteering. Lets kick some butt and feel the passion.

[RJ]

OK, perhaps a rather trite question..... but why should the government want medals won..... is it just for the general wellbeing of us all.... so we can puff our chests out? Are there other reasons?

And back to O. With all our medals won over the years what have we as a sport done with those winners? Have we paraded them around the country to inspire our ordinary club members? Have we told the rest of the public, look what our sport has just done? Have we marketed the medals in any way?

Currently we are. Part of Heather Monro's job as an RDO is to visit schools as a medal winner and inspire the kids to take up sport and healthy eating. I know lots of other medal winners are tasked to do similar, and I suppose having Kelly Holmes visiting the school has a lot of positive effects! Certainly that strategy of reaching the kids personally works, but it is slow to reach large numbers.

We have medal winners within the sport at the moment and WILL have many more in the future. How do we use them to inspire and educate the general public in the joys of orienteering? Those of you skilled in the arts of PR.... tell us!