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Johnstone's View 29th August 2008

After the perennial despair of poor achievement in line with low expectations, the surprise of unexpected British success at the Beijing Olympics was a rare novelty for those of us watching the television coverage. The image of Chris Hoy, with his three gold medals, waving the Union flag, is also something which I find fundamentally reassuring.

The more difficult idea which we all now need to come to terms with is that we, the United Kingdom, not only have to begin planning our successes for 2012, but we have to run the whole event!

The politicking has started already. Alex Salmond is jealous of the money which will be spent in London. No surprises there then, since his whole political philosophy is based on jealousy. Oh, and he wants Scotland to have our own Olympic team, presumably so that instead of cheering our neighbours on, we can grudge them there success instead.

Scotland has an enormous amount to gain from the London Olympics in 2012 and we must stop the whining and commit ourselves to this opportunity.

The first group to benefit will be our young people. If you make the mistake of listening to some commentators, Scotland’s young people seem to be famous for their obesity, their drug use and their inability to observe the simplest rules or any form of discipline.

True, perhaps, that we are a nation of extremes, but we are not short of examples of young men and women who, through their own efforts and hard work, have succeeded in their chosen field, but we are too often found wanting in our application of the kind of encouragement and support needed to reach the top.

What about our education system? Now there lies a real problem. Recent exam results support the claims that our schools are doing better and better, but at what? Of what value is an eventual University Degree, if our schools cannot teach their throughput how to eat healthily and keep themselves fit?

I remember my own daughter loosing her motivation for education at an early age when she first encountered a ‘non competitive’ school sports day. This was, apparently, designed so that children who did not excel at sports didn’t feel left out! The message my daughter received was, that the thing she was best at, was of no value. Game over!

We need to make our education authorities give a much higher priority to physical fitness and education for ‘life’. And that could well start with the introduction of much more competitive attitudes from the earliest age groups.

Here in Stonehaven, our Secondary school where I was lucky enough to compete in various sports in the 1970’s, is now unable to maintain its playing fields in a usable condition. Nothing new there, by the way. I remember taking a ‘nose dive’ when I put my foot in a rabbit hole more than thirty years ago. The surprising thing is that, now that the ‘Health and Safety’ police have applied their politically correct philosophy and closed them down, this is such a low priority that nothing is being done about it!

Some say that the money being spent in London would be better spent on ’grass roots’ facilities. Well, yes, some more support would be welcome, but it would not address the real problem, that too many of our potential future Olympians are passing their time playing video games, hanging around on street corners or indulging in lifestyles which will damage their health and destroy their lives in the long term.

I also remember learning the basic concepts of community and society (yes I do believe it exists) from the playing of team games. Here in the Mearns, we are very lucky to have so many willing volunteers outside our schools who can keep these going locally. Other areas are not so lucky and their kids are not second-class citizens, they need the schools to review their priorities.

Finally, we need our young men and women to aspire to success. We need more heroes like Chris Hoy who can inspire others to succeed. We can supply all the facilities we want but if no one wants to use them, we have achieved nothing.

I really enjoyed seeing Great Britain become the fourth most successful country at the Olympic games and I want to see my country go on to even greater success when we host the games in four years time. If Alex Salmond would prefer us to be the jealous, grudging neighbour, then let him do it alone while the rest of us, especially our future champions, take heart from our nations continuing success.