southerndownhill.com - Forum

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I need to rant about a subject that really get's my goat, and rears it's ugly head everytime the Olympics is on and I'm at work surround by mis-informed idiots who no nothing about sport.

It's the classic "Britain are rubbish at sport" comment!

People that think that because we havnt won the World Cup in football for fourty years, Tim Henman never won Wimbledon, we didn’t retain the Ashes last time we tried, and because we got beaten in the final of the Rugby World Cup last year means Great Britain is rubbish at ALL sport.

And Athletics, but I have to agree there...

People slang individuals as being rubbish "Tim Henman was a rubbish tennis player - he never won Wimbledon" Firstly, Tim Henman was ranked inside the world top 10 for the better part of 8 years, and secondly, while he never won a Grand Slam he's widely complimented by anyone who knows anything about tennis as a brilliant tennis player.

Our cricket team are still one of the top 6 contries in the world.

We've reached two consecutive Rugby World Cup finals, and were only just beaten in the last.

It get's me so riled.  Just because in the sports that occupy all the collum inches in the papers, and fill the weekend tele we're very good, but not dominating doesn’t mean we are rubbish at sport!!   

People don’t seem to realise that there are other sports out there that we completely dominate such as Sailing, equestrian, cycling to name a few.  And other sports where we're considered very productive such as - motorsport, rowing and snooker.

It's just the small mindedness of people who just think that Britain means we have rubbish sportsmen/women, and the negativity we pour on these people that I cant stand.

On the one hand, people are saying we're rubbish at sport.  On the other, theres the very British thing of "it's the taking part that counts" That's rubbish, whats the point of taking part unless your going to try and improve yourself?  It's a competition, not a carnival!!!! 

Maybe if the british public were supportive, less negative, more hopeful people would be more motivated to take up sport?   Maybe if the government insisted on PE for more than 1 hour a week, more people would take up sport?

I'm not suggesting the Chinese/Russian theory of taking people who excell at a sport out of school and turning them into a sporting superstar is the way to do it, but a halfway house might be a good idea.

Take a look at British Cycling.  Complete pap in the 90's and now we're the world superpower at track cycling.  (We even dominate in downhill MTB with 3 world champions at the moment - not that you'll hear that on the news, or read about it in a national newspaper) It's all about spending Lottery funding wisely, cutting out the people who won't make it or arent dedicated enough, and giving the people who are determined and who do have the talent, the means to unleash it with the help of trainers, funding, nutritionists, and facilities.

We're a brilliant sporting country, but could be as successful as China, Russia, the USA and Australia if money is spent wisely, and people were more positive!!

Thoughts?! 

I totally agree!!! Many of the guys I know are saying the olympics is great but of course GB is sh!t at every thing we try! All I have to say is, "If you think they so crap then I'd like to see you give the pommel horse (for example) a go!!!"

I'm glad someone else feels this way!

Smanderson ;)

true... however we haven't reached a world cup final since 1966... and everyone knows that British people only follow football!! i thought you would have known that being English yourself!! ::)

No we couldn't.

We're a brilliant sporting nation, no doubt about that.  BUT we've got one major disadvantage compared to the other countries you mentioned there.  They've got a much much larger pool of talent to draw from.  Hence their getting stupid amounts of medals compared to us.

We could do better, and money could be better spent, but there's not a cat in hells chance that we'll ever get to the same standard as those 3 countries...we're already punching well above our weight.  The main problem is that peoples expectations are set far too high.  If we don't beat those massive countries we're considered s**t.  Go figure.

Rootes

Yes.

No.

Dunno.

I didn't read it. Essay much?

rootes has a point! the US can pick from twice as many people as we do, plus there is a whole area of their culture devoted to sporting prowess! the fat they celebrate sport so much at their school level means a lot. when i was at school if a team did well and got a medal or cup then they would get an announcement made in assembly, over there they get parades and party's thrown for them! Big difference

I despise Football! >:(

I was thinking about Rootes point the other day China, USA, Russia etc are absolutly massive countries!!! This means that they have so much more of a chance to have an outstanding sports man that GB or any other small country.

Smanderson

Maybe comapring us to the USA, Russia, and China is a little unfair due to population issues, but we've 3x the population of Australia? So our pool of talent, theoretically, is a lot bigger than Oz.

I'm sure a LOT of it all comes down to School, parents, consoles, and weather.

Australians live a much more "outdoorsy" lifestyle, and sport is as bigger deal as anything else.  I think we should take a look at the ways the Aussies do things - sport institutes, and the like.

Yeh, I didn't see Australia when I read it first, but it is still true compared to the other countries.

The other main problem we face at the moment is the nature of our society...competition in schools is getting to the point where it's looking like it might cease to exist soon...you know, you wouldn't want one kid getting upset because he/she's not as good as another kid...parents might complain  ::)

This is a major problem! I know a lot of primary schools are considering stopping sports days, that can't be good when you consider that in most sports its widely accepted that if you're not spotted by the end of primary school you have no chance of being competitive!!

These things HAVE to start young, and at the moment they really don't.

Rootes

So many kids have no interest in their own fitness, let alone the drive to compete these days though.  Every week their would be a big group of people skiving off P.E at school , forging sick notes, faking injuries etc simply because they "couldn't be bothered". 

Surely 1 hour of P.E a week isn't enough.  Everyone at school should have to do 1 hours sport a day, i reckon we'd soon see a big improvement not only in the level of sports within the country but also it would help all these fat kids shed a few stone! Plus P.E teachers need to be allowed to bully kids. An hours hard excercise every day would son sort this country out! Isn't that the case in Australie etc? Sports are considered a critical part of schooling?

I agree with these points Rootes.  Considering these constraints, it's damm impressive that we are one of the top sporting nations.

Sport in Schools is a joke, and the facilities we offer in the majority of sports is pap compared to the "big four" countries.  Yet the public still feel they have a right to moan.

We really need to take a leaf out of British Cyclings approach to track cycling....

Schools and Parents need to encourage children to take up sport.

And we need to be more supportive of our sporting people.

Sports which may have a smaller interested audience need more acknowledgement from the media - maybe stories such as Gee and Rachels latest accomplishments can inspire "ordinary" people?

I doubt it, DH is far too much a minority sport 99% of the country have no idea it even happened or that they exist.

What we need is a massive medal haul as is hoped from the track boys and girls...big publicity, big success = big funding = more success.

It's a big loop, I find it wierd that the sport we're amazing at is one of the more expensive of the olympic events and is one that's pretty sparsely spread facility wise.

Rootes

Sports in school sucks.

Go do it yourself them comeback and piss and moan.

Until then go away and die, horribly and painfully.

Parents not schools.

'I'm not going to help my kid; thats for the SCHOOL to do.' NO IT'S NOT

British attitude sucks.

I think we're pretty good at sport....

Formula 1 -

Mclaren = British, Hamilton = British

Football -

Premiership - The most sort ofter league for players in the world
Manchester United - European Cup Holders

MTB - British male & Female - just won at Crankworx

Tennis - Murray - 1st in the UK and 6th in the world

Rugby - 5th currently (England)

Cricket - between 2-8th depending on which matches

And on top of all this we have Jenson Button......  ::)


So we are pretty good.....

I agree totally. PE was rubbish! If you are going to play basketball, football, cricket, or whatever then everyone that is playing has to want to play, otherwise nobody will enjoy it. I hated being told i had to do it for my health. This was a point in my life where i was easily doing 100miles or more a week on my bike. I also didn't like being made to play sports I didn't want to play. Football was the main one.

Anyway back on the original topic. I think people say we are rubbish 'cos they see us just missing out in a final or whatever and think we are not as good. The fact that we are in the final in the first place doesn't seem to come into it.

Just my thoughts on the 'British' Premiership. Look what happens when all the foreign players cant play and it becomes the England team. Granted we aren't rubbish but we certainly aint as good as it would seem. Football isn't a game/sport anymore anyway (or not at the top level), its just a money making thing.

Pip

Uk is also incredibly good at MX and enduro racing, but like downhill it never get a mention.

at least team GB have realised that, since we are hosting the Olympics in 2012, we need some new talent and has finally pulled its finger out its arse and started promoting sport! maybe we'll look back at this thread in 4 years and be impressed with the get up and go.... serverly doubt it tho!

I agree that we are an incredibly good sporting nation but the main problem is not too little PE being done in schools, its mainly lacing the facilities to train elite performers we've only just got that tennis training centre haven'twe and how log did that take? But it would take an incredible amount of effort to ever break even with sporting superpowers like China, Russia and the US manly because of the numbers of performers they can call on Chinas population is over a billion and the US' was 260 million last time I checked with those numbers of people imagine how many millions of people participate in sport and how many more people they can have reaching the elite level of performance compared to the UK which has 60 million. I'm not saying it can never be done or that we're not good (when you look at it in this respect our sporting performances are even more impressive) but it would need almost everyone in our country to start participating in sport for us to have a chance of producing the same numbers of athletes.

british cyclist's at beijing says it all domination on rubbish!! and the rows are on form aswell for that matter.

G

There was four countries listed   ;)
The whole sport in school is very badly organised but if people are realy into it then they will do it on there own.

Yes, because that was a really vital part of my comment wasn't it you pedantic little tw*t end.

Rootes

eh?! Mate I was joking.... Taking the mick out of the whole pedantic image.

i always used to skip my core p.e lessons, but i always did my sport studies lessons as they were well structured and everyone wanted to be there.

as its already been said the core p.e sucks. and making kids do it isnt going to make the sporting talent in britain any better, they need to join clubs. school p.e only supports football, cricket, sometimes rugby.

the public need to open their eyes and realise football and the mainstream sports are not the only ones that exsist.

and saying that we are good at football because we have the premiership league is bullcrap. how many of those players are foreign?

if we dont want to be humiliated at 2012 olympics then as a country we need to support our athletes alot more, with better facilities and more of them. im sure the government has some money they can spare,infact reading some of the things ive read, there could be alot of money used to make britain a more athletic country.

Dan

cycling is only going to get stronger ,

track was concentrated on as there are less varibles to go wrong.

We got the medals and he glory and now the funding from big companies , money is now going to be put into pushing a pro tour road team from BC and more cash is going into mtb , and eventually this has to leak down to the downhill

who ever said the premiership makes us good at football needs a big slap... out of Britains "main stream" sports football is most probably what we are worsted at...

not only that it barely even a sport anymore, more a bunch of women falling over and calling for ref... i can't think of one current footballer that i have any respect for... not one


who said Britain is "rubbish" at sport in first place???

agree with everything there... we just walked away today with a clutch of medals from cycling and rowing and everyone is telling us were crap! We dominate in those sports, almost every country would love to be as good at them as we are!

and yes we are awful at football, no where near as good as we are at other sports!

oh and i'm going to be an arse like so many others and say....Worsted???????

Getting folk to play footie was no problem at my school. Cross country though? I saw it as a good chance to gauge my fitness and against others and improve it.  Few others did too. Most people moaned and walked and cried.

Lol, I used to love XC at school, I had a few rivals in my year and we used to go out to beat each other every time, it got pretty heated usually.  Good laugh though, I remember countless runs "yeh I'm just gonna pace it nicely"...was I fook.

But then I used to do XC through choice at A Level in lessons, so maybe I was just wierd.

Rootes

i generally love sport any opertunity at school id take it, i agree with rootes xc was always pretty heated with some dodgy tactics cropping up every now and again but it made it enjoyable! the government does need to encourage sport more 3 jamacans in the 100 final yes they are outstanding especially bolt who takes the piss but there has been money invested in jamacan athletics by the government and its starting to show. the cycling team a little money invested and look at them only 1 race did they not win to day and he still got 3rd, fantastic!

G

What the hell i am in school im takin PE that was a stupid comment as i am 17 seriously think before you post

Sorry buddy, but the sports system in schools is rubbish for getting the maximum potential out of the amount of talent we have in this country.

Alexhill isn't the most subtle bloke on here though, there was no need for him to be rude.

The problem is that children are encouraged in to a very narrow selection of sports from a very young age.  Primary schools - it's football for the boys, netball/gymnastics for the girls, maybe some swimming if you've got access to a pool, and possibly some tennis in the summer.

Secondary schools are much the same.  The majority of schools in the UK play football as a first sport for boys, a few do rugby, and I know a couple that do hockey....if you don't take part in these sports you're a no-one.  Obviously this is a generalisation.  My school was a Lottery funded sports centre of excellence, so I was lucky, I got access to a massive range of sports, and played a few to county level, but this isn't a typical scenario!  I mean I was given one day a week off school to train in 6th form, that's hardly common!

I did PE at GCSE, A-Level and have taken Sports Science to degree level, so I guess it rubbed off on me.  But how many kids do you know who rubbed their hands with glee at the idea of PE/Games at school when they were doing anything other than football/girls equivalent?

British Cycling's got the right idea with the track disciplines, it helps that we've got a very very talented pool of top riders and they're being encouraged.  I'd love to see us putting more emphasis on different sports at school.  After all, we're hardly thriving at Football are we despite every kid and his dog playing it....

Rootes

considering were sat 3rd in the olympics at the min and absolutly dominating some of the events (cycling)

which is good as it is publicity for the sport i would highly disagree with all the screbs that say we are sh#t at sports

the real reason thy say that is because they are pig ignorant.

We are 3rd in the medals table at the olympics at time of me typing this, that isn't half as bad as the last couple of olympics. We are ahead of russia and the aussies at the moment. So.... we can't be that bad.

Ben

i think the main thing you should all realise as riders is that we dont suck at riding. cos in the time trials and track riding were getting golds. and steve peat, though he is slipping, was the best.