2013-05-19T14:11:50-04:00 Matt Dathan http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=matt-dathan Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Matt Dathan Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2174188 2012-11-21T19:14:55-05:00 2013-01-21T05:12:01-05:00

Matt Dathan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-dathan/
I know I am vastly in the minority with this opinion and I risk becoming very unpopular by publicising it, but as we are talking about democracy here. Please let us respect minority opinions and avoid that horribly-termed 'tyranny of the majority' danger!

I am writing this article on the day MPs vote in the House of Commons on whether to give prisoners in the UK the vote, having broken a European Court of Human Rights ruling for seven years by denying prisoners a say on election day - a position which the UK parliament has consistently stuck to.

I hear my opponents scream 'If you choose to break the law, you should lose your rights under that law.' But prisoners don't exist in a vacuum; they no longer get shipped off to a different country with different rules. They are very much at the mercy of the legislation made in parliament, in regional assemblies and in local councils. In fact they are often more susceptible to the laws our elected politicians and authorities enact. The law is constantly being changed, reviewed and discussed when it comes to our justice system and when the money is tight, as it is now, prisons are among the first institutions to face cuts as the public jump at the chance to punish those who are being punished even more.

So prisoners are affected by the decisions our elected politicians make more than most, and yet they have no say whatsoever in influencing the decisions that are directed squarely at them.

But most importantly, prisoners should be given the vote (apart from murderers and rapists) because it might at last force politicians to address the appalling conditions of the UK's prisons instead of the issue always being put on the backburner.

One of the events that shaped my rather unconventional support for giving prisoners the vote was when I visited Winson Green prison in Birmingham in 2009. I was shocked to discover such lack of regard for the most basic of human rights that the prisoners were subject to. In a room no bigger than my tiny single room in university halls were two single beds no more than a metre apart with a toilet at the end of the room and a minute window looking over the gloom of inner-city Birmingham. Deprived of any privacy, this is where prisoners are forced to live most of their lives in jail, without the chance to have any influence over how the local authority (Birmingham City Council) decides to treat their life inside.

Improving prisoner conditions does not win you votes of course - in fact it does the reverse by going against the will of the public. This tyranny of the majority over the minority, however, (sorry to use that terrible academic phrase again) is the most fundamental dangers of democracy and one which multicultural and multi-faith Britain is so good at protecting. We must extend that inherent British quality to those on the very margins of society, many of whom are the most vulnerable in our society.

I may sound like a hypocrite in advocating handing certain prisoners the vote and not others, such as murderers and rapists. Yes - all prisoners have broken the law - but to differing degrees, and for those who have taken the life of another human being or have raped and taken the soul of another human being, I believe at this point we can justifiably take away more of their human rights as it is the human which they have irreversibly harmed.

On a broader scale, we have a responsibility and a duty as a country to champion human rights across the world, and that important role is being undermined by continuing to deny prisoners the vote. We cannot pick and choose which parts of the European Convention on Human Rights we abide by while at the same time shouting and lecturing at the poor record of other countries, such as Russia for example. We either sign up to it and stand up to human rights abusers or we leave the treaty altogether and at the same time sacrifice our influence on the international scene.

I know many people would want me locked up simply for holding the view that at least some prisoners should be allowed the vote! Luckily I live in Britain and therefore enjoy the freedom of speech and therefore will (hopefully) avoid that outcome! But we must avoid the temptation to rule by majority, or else all kinds of draconian measures would be introduced, such as capital punishment. We must respect the basic human rights of all people and giving all adults in society at least a voice and a say in the rules they are subject to should be one of those fundamental rights, because that is how we can ensure even more fundamental human rights, such as the right to privacy, are protected.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2112844 2012-11-11T19:00:00-05:00 2013-01-11T05:12:01-05:00

Matt Dathan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-dathan/
For England's second tier managers, Halloween is consistently the scariest time of the year. Just two and a half months into the season Championship chairman like to start wielding the axe to stave off the nightmare of relegation or to keep alive their dream of promotion.

This season has been no exception to the norm. In a whirlwind past fortnight, Bolton sacked Owen Coyle and replaced him with Dougie Freedman from Crystal Palace, who themselves paid around £400,000 for Blackpool's Ian Holloway. Blackpool chose to replace him with Michael Appleton from Portsmouth, Blackburn finally appointed Henning Berg after a month without a boss and Mick McCarthy replaced Paul Jewell to take over the league's bottom club whilst Burnley appointed Sean Dyche.

The fact that chairmen so consistently lose faith so soon into the season is baffling enough and shows the extent to which they are obsessed with the financial rewards of promotion and the fear of relegation.

But even more baffling is the fact that each of the newly appointed managers have all been given contracts of at least two and a half years, despite the average tenure of a Championship boss currently standing at just 1.44 years. The longest serving current Championship manager is Derby's Nigel Clough, and he's only been there since January 2009.

The gap in revenues enjoyed by Premier League clubs compared to those in the Championship is a common explanation for this lack of patience among Championship chairman, and the new television deal for Premier League matches may account for the impatient sequence of sackings in the Championship this season. From next season, Premier League clubs will share annual revenues of £1bn for domestic TV coverage, an increase of 70% on the current contract. Deals for foreign coverage of the Premier League are also under negotiation, with Scandinavian countries having agreed a 35% increase in their contract. If this rise is replicated elsewhere across the globe, the Premier League will receive well over £2bn from TV sales outside of the UK.

Considering this sharp rise in television revenue for Premier League clubs it is perhaps unsurprising that Championship clubs are even more desperate to get a bite of the cherry next season than ever before. Last season's play-off final between West Ham and Blackpool was valued at £90m so if we take even just the 70% domestic increase in TV revenue, this will make promotion worth at least £150m.

Sacking your manager half-way through his contract and paying compensation to take another club's manager may therefore seem like pennies compared to this £150m prize.

But if we return the focus from finance to football - the only means by which Championship clubs can achieve this multi-million pound jackpot, the perceived rationality of chopping and changing your manager is in fact an irrational way to seek promotion.

In a league that is famous for its unpredictability, instilling stability at the top is surely the best way to control your own team's fate. Having a relatively stable and long term vision from a single manager is the reason that Southampton and Norwich were able to achieve back-to-back promotions over the last three seasons. The Championship's second longest serving manager, Gus Poyet, has enjoyed success with Brighton over the past three years and the long-term success of Manchester United, Everton and Arsenal has been built on solid long-term leadership from each of their managers.

So instead of criticising chairmen for offering managers contracts that are at least double the current average tenure of service, we should be aiming our criticism at those who lose patience so quickly. The best way to escape chaos is consistency so it would be refreshing to see more clubs buck the trend and honour the contracts they so willingly hand out to start with.

By backing managers with long term contracts - as Crystal Palace have done by handing a four and a half year contract to Ian Holloway - managers are more likely to be loyal and in-turn be able to offer players long-term stability at the club too. Moving from Blackpool to Crystal Palace may have seemed like an odd career move (especially having only moved into a new house in Blackpool three weeks ago) but considering Holloway was only on a one year rolling contract with the Tangerines, it becomes rather less surprising that he decided to opt for a more secure future in south east London.

Championship clubs should therefore follow the example of Crystal Palace, rather than the strategy pursued by Blackpool, as an exit strategy from the country's most competitive league.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2112919 2012-11-11T07:32:24-05:00 2013-01-11T05:12:01-05:00

Matt Dathan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-dathan/ In the aftermath of the Lance Armstrong revelations, the debate in cycling has turned to the sport's future. How does cycling deal with its troubled past in a way that can truly rebuild its reputation?

While the sport's leading teams are united in their determination to guarantee a clean future for the sport and to rebuild its reputation, they are divided in the approach they are taking. Team Sky's zero-tolerance policy and Team Garmin-Sharp's truth and reconciliation approach are two models at opposite ends of the spectrum. This contrast in how to deal with past wrongdoing echoes the debates that took place in post Nazi Germany and post-apartheid South Africa, and although on an entirely different scale of wrongdoing, cycling is in need of a similar recovery of reputation.

Team Sky last month reaffirmed its zero-tolerance approach to doping and has begun a process of interviews with its riders, management and support staff. Anyone found to have had a past role in doping will be forced to leave, albeit with a generous financial pay-off, which Sky's general manager Dave Brailsford called "softening the blow".

Two of Team Sky's coaches have fallen victim of this process. Race manager Bobby Julich admitted to having taken a banned substance as a professional rider in the late 1990s whilst sporting director Steven de Jongh has also left his post after admitting taking performance-enhancing drugs during his cycling career. Brailsford accepted it was highly likely that Sky would lose further talent but insisted it was a price worth paying to ensure cycling's dirty past does not jeopardise the team's future.

Jonathan Vaughters, who confessed to doping while a team-mate of Lance Armstrong, is head of Team Garmin-Sharp and disagrees with Brailsford's approach. He wants to see a truth and reconciliation process that would provide a strong incentive for everyone with a doping history to be honest with their past.

According to the head of US Anti-Doping, Travis Tygart, setting up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the only way the sport can move on from the Lance Armstrong era. And considering the extent to which a culture of doping dominated the sport over so many years, from the top teams through to those at the bottom, everything possible must be done to reveal the truth in order for the sport to come to terms with its past, to learn from such a horrific era and to ensure the sport never falls victim to such institutional wrongdoing ever again. The risk of future revelations of cycling's past would risk tipping the sport beyond the point of redemption.

And therefore Team Sky's policy fails to tackle the problem on three levels. First, it fails to provide sufficient incentives for past cheats to confess, which risks endangering the sport further down the line. Secondly, zero-tolerance fails to come to terms with the reality of an era in which so many cyclists and staff were coerced into doping just in order to survive. And thirdly, it fails to recognise the value of having past dopers on the team who possess the knowledge and awareness of doping activity and might therefore be invaluable in preventing such practices from occurring in the future.

Under Sky's rules, team members are faced with the decision whether to confess in the name of rebuilding the sport's reputation or to keep the 'code of silence' - known as the 'omerta' - in order to protect their personal reputation. Not all riders have the moral courage or the financial stability to self-sacrifice for the greater good of cycling. Team Sky's zero-tolerance policy is only adding to an individual's incentive to maintain the omerta, whilst a truth and reconciliation approach adds to the incentive of confessing.

Brailsford's hard-line approach to dealing with cycling's past appears brave, bold and even heroic on the face of it. But when one considers the extent to which doping became part and parcel of the sport - so much so that Armstrong's former masseuse Emily O'Reilly said taking performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) "was like putting your socks on in the morning" - it becomes clear that the policy fails to acknowledge the institutional culture of doping and the intense pressure placed on riders to take PEDs. This sounds hard to accept to begin with - how can anyone defend athletes who have intentionally cheated? And indeed some riders, such as Sky's former sporting director Steven de Jongh, have admitted they chose to dope out of their own volition.

But the overall picture that has emerged from Usada's report paints a picture that being a clean rider during the Armstrong era was the exception to the norm and this was due to a deeply entrenched doping culture that gave riders little chance of success without taking illegal substances. As Brailsford has said himself, these cyclists lived in an era in which more people chose to dope than did not.

The French cyclist Christophe Bassons, who was known as Monsieur Propre (Mr. Clean), told BBC Radio 5Live's Peddlers: Cycling's Dirty Truth documentary how he was offered a 1,000% salary rise from his team manager at Festina in 1998 if he used EPO and growth hormone. He refused this offer, which would have seen his monthly income rise from €4,500 to €45,000.

Bassons was in a very small minority who had the courage to decide not to dope. Yet when he decided to speak out against the prominence of PEDs in the sport during the 1999 Tour de France, he was singled out not only by his rivals but by his own team mates and fellow countrymen, who united in the peloton on the following day's race to deny him support as he broke away to try and win the stage. He quit the sport and became ill with depression, all because he had the moral courage not to cheat.

It is not hard, therefore, to realise why so many riders succumbed to the temptation to dope and why for many it was a matter of sustaining their livelihood. Matt DeCanio told of his moral dilemma when cycling for a small team in Tuscany. The team's general manager would get furious, DeCanio recalled, when his riders failed to win races and would force him them to take PEDs or face the prospect of being dropped or even sacked.

Tyler Hamilton spoke about how it took 1,000 days until a professional cyclist in the peloton hit the 'fork in the road', at which point he would be forced to decide whether to take PEDs. He said you reached a stage where you became "sick and tired of getting your butt kicked by people you know you're better than" and submitted to cheating in order to be able to compete.

Team Sky's zero-tolerance policy therefore fails to acknowledge the degree to which cyclists were under pressure to dope, many of whom became reluctant products of a deeply embedded culture which was too powerful to stand up to and the consequences of rebuffing often too severe to contemplate. To deny these riders any form of restorative justice and instead force them out of their team is a punishment that does not fit the crime.

And finally, cycling needs the experience and knowledge of past dopers and support staff who facilitated the doping to ensure the sport's future is clean. The former team owner of HTC-Highroad Bob Stapleton believed it was these people who should become part of the solution, and that is why he hired confessed doper Rolf Aldag as sports director. His experience, Stapleton said, would help young athletes learn to compete in a clean environment.

If cycling is truly going to rebuild its reputation as a clean sport, it must first come to terms with its past. Its teams and authorities must unite and do all they can to encourage all information about past wrongdoing to be revealed. Without the truth there is no opportunity for reconciliation. Team Sky's zero-tolerance approach is neither encouraging truth nor facilitating reconciliation, and therefore hampers the opportunity for cycling to not only learn the full lessons of its past but also the prospect of recovering its reputation as a sport of integrity and fair play.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2073897 2012-11-04T19:51:11-05:00 2013-01-04T05:12:01-05:00

Matt Dathan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-dathan/
And they have very detailed evidence to base these claims upon, from both the huge profit margins his Bain Capital firm makes to the very nature of its financial success: reversing the fortunes of floundering firms. But this undoubtable business shrewdness does not fit into the premise of the challenge he would face as chief executive of the most powerful country and richest economy in the world. The very nature of Romney's business success means he cannot use the two fundamental sources of his business niche; risk- averse and selectivity, as a claim to be able to run the most powerful country in the world.

Business, just like politics, is extremely varied, and the fact that Romney was a good businessman does not tell us much about the nature of that success. Because the nature of his success, especially during his latter years as head of Bain Capital, was being able to be highly selective in choosing which failing firms he would choose to try and resurrect. And even when he chose a firm that failed to recover, his company still made profits from its management consultancy services and its exploitation of tax loopholes.

If Romney were to win the election on 6 November, he would not enjoy any flexibility over choosing which ventures he would select to invest in, because the United States of America resembles one very big firm. And although it is a venture which certainly falls into his line of business experience of needing resurrecting, it by no means offers Romney the low risk, cautionary approach which he has modelled his business success upon.

Nevertheless, there are many attributes of Romney's business history which will aid the challenge of being the chief executive of the United States of America. But he needs to offer more than simply a specimen of his entrepreneurial success. Profit is not the be-all and end-all of federal government, despite many Republicans wishing it was so, and he will need to offer more to firms, government departments, aid agencies and the 7.9% of unemployed Americans than simply giving up on them because government, unlike Bain Capital, cannot make profit out of failure.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1829618 2012-08-27T02:14:00-04:00 2012-10-26T05:12:07-04:00

Matt Dathan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-dathan/
The Lance Armstrong drug dispute is just one chapter in the increasing number of cases where sportsmen and women are presumed guilty of cheating before any evidence is placed against them. With all the talk of sports stars inspiring our young generation, we must ensure we avoid this dangerous trend becoming the norm, or else our youngsters will grow up with a very skewed interpretation of the fundamental legal right that you are innocent until proven guilty.

John Fahey, USADA's chief, believes Armstrong's decision to stop contesting the doping charges placed against him only leads to one conclusion: that he is a 'drug cheat'; that his refusal to respond to the charges transformed the allegations into fact.

But this is simply not how justice works. The International Cycling Union (UCI) said it would wait until the evidence was released before judging Armstrong's case, and that is exactly the stance that should rule any such allegations placed against sportsmen and women, or anyone for that matter.

So far all the conspiracies have been directed towards Armstrong, but some serious ones should be asked of USADA. The evidence they claim proves Armstrong's culpability comes from a federal investigation against Armstrong and his team. It lasted eighteen months and failed to find sufficient evidence to file criminal charges.

Now I'm not saying it is implausible that the same evidence would not necessarily lead to proof that Armstrong took drugs; there may not have been sufficient evidence to prosecute him criminally but it may be proof of sporting wrongdoing nonetheless. I am simply highlighting the fact that questions must be asked of the apparent strength of USADA's evidence given it failed to stand up in a federal US court, evidence which included Armstrong's team answering under oath.

And USADA's claim that 10 co-cyclists are prepared to testify against Armstrong is also questionable. You have to question the integrity of evidence from these witnesses, who must have a significant amount of self-interest to gain from giving evidence against an athlete who dominated their sport for nearly a decade, and athletes who themselves have as many questions to answer over foul play as Armstrong does himself.

It is not the strength of the evidence that I dispute, however. For all I know, Armstrong may well have drugged his way to seven consecutive Tour de France triumphs. Incidentally, if he is proven to have taken drugs, it means the thousands of drug tests that Armstrong took, which made him the most tested athlete ever, failed to discover banned substances. This would trigger a whole new problem for worldwide anti-doping.

Instead, it is the principle that USADA and sporting bodies across the world appear to accept that I see as extremely problematic and damaging: that you are guilty until proven innocent. USADA's chief said the weight of evidence against Armstrong, and his refusal to respond to the charges made the allegations "factual". Well let's see that evidence, have it judged before the UCI, Court of Arbitration for Sport or any independent panel of sports judges, before we convict an athlete who remains one of the greatest athletes of all time. One cannot simply assume that because someone refuses to defend themselves that they are guilty, especially considering they have been fighting the same allegations for over a decade.

The Armstrong case mirrors several other high profile cheating-related controversies that have mired world sport where sporting officials have jumped to guilty verdicts before seeing an ounce of evidence.

After Caster Semenya recorded a world leading time of 1 minute 56 seconds at the 800m in the 2009 World Athletics Championships, the first reaction from IAAF officials was not amazement but suspicion. It was faster than a woman was expected to be able to run and Semenya was placed under a gender test and suspended for 11 months. When she only won silver at London 2012, suspicion was again the first reaction, this time people were questioning whether she deliberately tried not to win in order to avoid another media storm.

Ye Shiwen generated a similar reaction when she swam the 400m individual medley at London 2012 in a world record-breaking time, breaking her own personal best by five seconds and swimming the last 50m faster than Ryan Lochte had in the men's equivalent. Those who agreed with the British Olympics chief Lord Moynihan's assessment that Shiwen "deserves recognition for her talent" were out-spoken by those who chose to jump straight to suspicious conclusions.

Completely unfounded claims were launched against her sporting integrity; her performance was dubbed as "disturbing and suspicious" by none other than the executive director of the World Swimming Coaches Association John Leonard. He said: "At this point it is not believable to many people", saying the swim was being seen in the coaching community he represents as "unbelievable in its precise meaning." He compared her swim to that of Ireland's Michelle Smith, who was banned for tampering with a urine sample in the same event in the 1996 Olympics. Needless to say, Shiwen's samples have come back clean, and the suspicions were, like Semanya's, proven to be wrong.

These sporting achievements are the stories that inspire people throughout the world to better their own lives, they offer hope to those who are losing faith, whether that be sporting related or not. Lance Armstrong is one of the most inspiring people, let alone sportsmen, that have ever lived. His story of overcoming testicular cancer in 1996 before winning seven consecutive Tour de France championships is a story that should inspire anyone who has experienced a setback of any nature in all walks of life.

But it is not his legacy which is just at stake here. If he is proven to have cheated, then albeit throw the appropriate punishments at him. Regardless of what happens with Armstrong, we must ensure that our first reaction to record breaking human sporting achievements is not mired in suspicion and an automatic assumption of foul play. To respect the vast majority of clean, honest athletes who abide by the principle of fair play, our first reaction must be amazement, praise and honor, until the athlete in question is proven, through evidence, to have cheated.

If we continue down this treacherous path of assuming record-breaking athletes are cheats, we risk losing the inspirational power that sporting heroics offer society and the long-term legacy society takes from sport will eventually be one that changes the fundamental legal right that one is innocent until proven otherwise.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1826281 2012-08-23T18:05:06-04:00 2012-10-23T05:12:11-04:00

Matt Dathan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-dathan/
In fact, the criticism aimed at football from expert sports commentators to the man and woman in the street have been quite hurtful and blind, and although I neither claim to be an expert sports commentator nor a man (nor a woman) in the street, I think football deserves a defence of these widespread and un-justified criticisms.

James Lawton in the Independent compared the "thrilling competitive values and so many moments of unforgettable grace" with the "revulsion" of "money-drenched" football which provokes a "weary resignation." Michael Owen predicted this onslaught of criticism, explaining how he had turned to his wife whilst watching the Olympics and said: "just you watch footballers get hammered once this is over."

My defence of football from this entourage of Olympic-related attacks, and to a lesser extent of footballers themselves, centres around inclusivity: it is the most popular sport in the UK, it attracts people from all parts of society whether rich or poor, young or old, male or female (as London 2012 showed), northern or southern, and it is popular among all religions and races of multicultural Britain. I cannot think of any of the Olympic sports that GB excelled in this summer, nor for that matter any other sport, which can rival football in terms of social inclusiveness.

First of all, despite all the moaning that football was the least attractive Olympic sport and that football was an un-welcome member of the Olympic movement, the gold medal match that saw Mexico stun Brazil 2-1 at Wembley last Saturday was the event that attracted the largest paid attendance of London 2012. You can argue all you want about the incredibly high demand for athletics tickets, but ultimately, facts don't lie and it is incredible that 86,162 people turned up to a match between two countries from the other side of the Atlantic.

These figures were not exceptions to the rule as large crowds were seen throughout the men's and women's tournaments, which drew total attendances of over two million. And London can be proud of these record-breaking numbers, especially with the record attendance of 80,203 at the women's gold medal match, which shows how football is offering an increasingly tangible route towards gender equality in sport that remains an embarrassing number of years behind the rest of society.

These numbers boost the popularity, the support and the economic impact of the Olympics. For the 2012 Games, it presented the only chance for people living outside of the prosperous South of England to experience the Olympics as Glasgow, Cardiff, Newcastle, Manchester and Coventry played host to Olympic football matches. It was football which brought the Olympics to Geordies, Mancunians, Brummies, Glaswegians and the Welsh and many more who found it much cheaper to travel to one of the football venues than a hefty train ticket to the capital.

And this inclusive quality that football offered London 2012 is the value that football possesses more than any other sport. Football is the simplest game that anyone with a ball and four jumpers can play, but it is also a sport that in our country encompasses all sectors of society, both in terms of participants and supporters. Whether it be religion, income, race or nationality, the beautiful game may divide people, but it certainly doesn't exclude people along those lines. And although its justified criticisms regarding homophobic and gender discrimination, football is making very tangible progress towards making it truly welcoming to all.

Now, can we say that the same degree of inclusivity exists in the Olympic sports in which people have been hailing the 'true' Olympic values and heroic achievements that will 'inspire a generation'? No. Once you look into the sports in which Team GB have won the most medals, it becomes rather embarrassing to discover that these sports are dominated by the white and wealthy of British society.

The top two sports in the GB medal table with nine medals each were cycling and rowing, which also happen to be two of the most expensive sports to participate in. All of these medallists happened to be white. And these two sports also happen to be the top two recipients of UK Sport funding prior to 2012 with a combined funding revenue of £53.331m.

Critics may point to the fact that third and fourth in the GB medal table was athletics and boxing respectively, which, along with taekwondo, boasted all seven of the non-white 2012 GB medallists. Yet sitting alongside athletics and boxing in the medal table are equestrian and sailing, each with five medals and needless to say these are sports that stink of inequality and exclusivity.

Whilst we must credit boxing and athletics for their more socially inclusive culture, their exceptions to the norm of 2012 GB medal winners only serve to reinforce my argument that underneath the almost exclusively positive, patriotic rhetoric of GB's Olympic success lies a horrifying truth: you are much more likely to win an Olympic medal if you are wealthy and white.

And there is even more hard factual evidence to back up my argument. Of all GB medal winners at 2012, 37% of them went to a private school, compared to 7% nationally. For rowing, that figure rises above 50%, and whilst many high performing athletes receive bursaries to attend fee-paying schools, the fact remains that you are more likely to become an Olympic champion if you attend a private school.
For those who claim the figures are distorted because of the high number of sporting elites who are offered bursaries, they are people who obviously do not strive for a society which provides genuine equality of opportunity from the grassroots level, and therefore they are people who deny the core Olympic value of equality, of using sport as a means to "understand each other despite any differences."

I have read and listened to many experts, from Matthew Said to Joey Barton, on how they believe football can learn from this summer's Olympic experience. And I completely agree that football can and should learn many valuable lessons from London 2012, and that is the reason why football players and officials will meet in Manchester next month to discuss these lessons. But the learning process must be seen as a two-way process: we must not be so blind to the many positives that the beautiful game gives us in terms of social inclusiveness and equality of opportunities; a value that GB's most prominent Olympic sports would do well to learn from themselves.

So I urge people to detach themselves for one minute from automatically turning to the prejudicial habit of lambasting football as they struggle to cope with the absence of a mesmerising Claire Balding, a weeping John Inverdale and the magical Sue Barker on their TV screens, and ask themselves why football continues to attract such a more comprehensive cross-section of British society than any rowing regatta or equestrian extravaganza ever will.

Until these valuable lessons of social inclusiveness are taken seriously at the grassroots level, the vast majority of British Olympic sports will never be able to say they are truly representative of British society.]]>