How will we ever compete?

Monday was a really quiet day as Andrea had some Achilles pain so we wanted to rest up and make sure that we gave her the best possible chance of the injury passing quickly. It meant that we ended up lounging around the apartment and only ventured outside when Andrea went to the gym next door and when I went cycling. Exciting stuff. It did mean we were able to watch some a fair amount of rubbish American television, which seems to be mainly repeats. We did manage to watch a lot of the American Office though, which despite not being as good as the British version is still a great show.

Yesterday we took a tour around some of the University of Oregon sports facilities. They really are absurdly good and from what I have seen put almost every university in the UK (bar Loughborough) to shame. From indoor American Football pitches to the 54,000 seater Autzen stadium to the 10,000 seater MacArthur Basketball Court to the historic Hayward Athletics Field. It is simply fantastic facility after fantastic facility here. We walked around mouths dropped and totally in awe! When we asked some of the grounds people around the indoor football pitch they said that these sort of facilities were pretty normal for the large American division I institutions! From what we have seen they are very well used as well. Every time we have been onto the University Campus there have always been people training or competing. While having great facilities doesn’t mean you will have great athletes - just look at Kenyan and Ethiopian domination of endurance running events - it certainly does enable you to do so.

As I have mentioned previously college sports over here are treated very seriously. Many of the sports teams have professional college coaches who organise practices and racing schedules for their top guys and girls. This systems helps make it a smooth transition for the kids that are used to training at home with a local club to training with a team at college. As most of you will know it is massively different to how things work in the UK. At most universities there is little structure within the majority of university sports clubs. This is mainly because they are run by students, who move on every few years, providing little continuation and no incentive to set up a program which will gain results a few years down the line. It is tough for any sports club to recruit and retain first-years who have been used to a more professional environment at home. With the large proportions of kids going to university now, not having a structured university sports system will do little to cultivate a set of world beating athletes. Instead of providing a platform for success within universities the governing bodies in the UK focus their limited funds on a select few ‘elites’ with money from the lottery. What is needed are structures and platforms that motivate all levels of sporting ability - from your beginners to your Olympians. UK Sport doesn’t have the resources and power to do implement what would be needed to have such a broad college system. However just focusing on the beginners and Olympians misses out a huge section in the middle and is where we in the UK generally goes wrong and is where in the US they generally get it right.


The indoor (American) Football pitch