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

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

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

Rootes

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

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???

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.

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