Reply to: Why does private education produce so many medal winners?

[Sysman]

Why are medals, especially gold medals, won more often than relative population would imply, by people from Scotland and Yorkshire?

'Cos we're determined and tough.

It could also be that sports clubs are more affordable and parents don't spend half their lives sitting in traffic jams.

[Doggy Styles]

Actually it doesn't. Jessica Ennis, Greg Rutherford, Mo Farah, Andy Murray .... I don't see a lot of private education there. Just a lot of achievers who don't need privilege to make it.

So let me ask this instead: why do so many people claim that private education produces better results? Could it be that they have a political axe to grind, more important to them than the facts?

Have you heard of the term 'statistics'?

[Doggy Styles]

Because it proves some of the traits of this thread wrong. Actually a new thread could be started "Why are state schooled sports people some of the highest earners?" and just put a list of the Premier League?

No it doesn't. For that you have to compare:

What proportion of medalists went to fee-paying schools

What proportion of people go to fee-paying schools

If more fee-payers win medals than expected under random distribution, the whole tenet of the thread is fair.

It's not about simply listing those medalists who went to state schools.

[Old Greg]

winning golds in the olympics is all very well, but its not the be all and end all.
having a bunch of healthy kids who just enjoy running around and having fun is much more important

Exactly. I find this obsession with being high on the medal table as a nation very peculiar. It's smacks of totalitatrian regimes looking for a propaganda coup.

It's interesting to compare China and India on this score.

[EternalOptimist]

Germany are doing pretty crap in the Olympics this year which is quite interesting as although sports in schools here, I personally find, is pretty crap but a heck of a lot of German children do sports outside of schools and are encouraged by their parents. Every town has numerous sports clubs with the facilities, for example this one near me has facilities for 24 different sports yet they're still not doing very well, does this put paid to the arguments discussed (or just bandied about) here about parents support (or should Germany disunite and allow the East to get back to doping?)

winning golds in the olympics is all very well, but its not the be all and end all.
having a bunch of healthy kids who just enjoy running around and having fun is much more important

[darmstadt]

OTOH, slum kids have the advantage that they can practice football all day, in their own streets. Hasn't that been how a lot of these South American players started?

Also, it's naive to assume that parents who send their kids to boarding school "do not have money issues". Maybe some don't, but many do.

Especially these boarding schools...

[OwlHoot]

e.g. all the weekends/evenings ferrying the kids to and from various places can put a huge strain on time and money for the average parent.

obviously the rich and those in boarding schools do not have the time/money issues. ..

OTOH, slum kids have the advantage that they can practice football all day, in their own streets. Hasn't that been how a lot of these South American players started?

Also, it's naive to assume that parents who send their kids to boarding school "do not have money issues". Maybe some don't, but many do.

[Moscow Mule]

And do we think that this is likely to be in the best interest of a child?

Has done Tiger Woods, The Williams Sisters and a few others alright.

Sad to think of the others who didn't make it, but greatness doesn't come for free.

[Ignis Fatuus]

Why are medals, especially gold medals, won more often than relative population would imply, by people from Scotland and Yorkshire?

[Mich the Tester]

Germany are doing pretty crap in the Olympics this year which is quite interesting as although sports in schools here, I personally find, is pretty crap but a heck of a lot of German children do sports outside of schools and are encouraged by their parents. Every town has numerous sports clubs with the facilities, for example this one near me has facilities for 24 different sports yet they're still not doing very well, does this put paid to the arguments discussed (or just bandied about) here about parents support (or should Germany disunite and allow the East to get back to doping?)

Germany's a rich country; the talent is spread quite wide across lots of sports and lots of choice as to what to do with free time. Anyway, this time they haven't got lots of medals but they have people who've come close so it could easily be different at the next olympics.

[darmstadt]

Germany are doing pretty crap in the Olympics this year which is quite interesting as although sports in schools here, I personally find, is pretty crap but a heck of a lot of German children do sports outside of schools and are encouraged by their parents. Every town has numerous sports clubs with the facilities, for example this one near me has facilities for 24 different sports yet they're still not doing very well, does this put paid to the arguments discussed (or just bandied about) here about parents support (or should Germany disunite and allow the East to get back to doping?)

[Mich the Tester]

And do we think that this is likely to be in the best interest of a child?

Yes, possibly, but what isn't in a child's best interests is what the Chinese sports coaches then go on to do to the kids.

And here we sit in luxury, pretending that drug use is the most serious problem in sports.

[Pondlife]

The reason GB excels at rowing is because our rivers and lakes don't have any crocodiles or hippos in, meaning more of our rowers survive to become champions.

There you go. Sorted.

[original PM]

And do we think that this is likely to be in the best interest of a child?

No - and lets say Pistorius started to win things with his blades - how long before people were purposefully choping off their legs so they could use a blade attachment -- mainly thinking the chinese - who would 'enforce' it!

[Old Greg]

It's commonly said that it takes 10000 hours to be "great" at something.

Very few parents that time to devote to their offspring an still support them.

Interesting move into the Chinese approach is being made by a few of the forward looking sports (swimming, cycling, rowing) whereby young adults with the correct body shape (e.g. lanky folk for rowing) are picked an given the correct training.

And do we think that this is likely to be in the best interest of a child?