2012 legacy could be left 'meaningless'

There's an unwritten rule that host countries of the Olympics don't criticise each other.

So it's significant that Canadian Olympic chiefs (who staged this year's Vancouver Winter Games) have taken a swipe at Britain over the Government's planned cuts to school sports funding.

Britain has to accept this, of course, because London made all sorts of ambitious promises to the International Olympic Committee about inspiring children to take up sport during the 2012 bid.

There is a growing belief that the cuts to the School Sports Partnerships (SSPs) will not help that goal at all. Twitter and Facebook are full of a campaign against the changes and I know secondary schools near to where I live have already started petitions against the cuts.

But to have a foreign national Olympic committee stepping into the row is an unusual development.

The letter from Canadian Olympic Committee chief executive Jean Dupre to Education Secretary Michael Gove came about because Canada plans to use the specialist Langdon Park sports school in Tower Hamlets in east London for training during the 2012 Games.

I've been to see the school's headmaster Chris Dunne and he was part of the report we did for the Politics Show which you can see on my blog last week.

He told me about the Canadian opposition to Gove's plans which resulted in the letter. He said the Canadians had been impressed with the system.

"When they last visited in the October half term I told them of the decision to abandon the SSPs," he said. "They (including their Chef de Mission Mark Tewksbury, an Olympic Gold Medallist) were visibly stunned, and asked me whether there was anything they could do to help.

"It's a pretty hefty indictment of the Government's actions by a very well-respected international body. "

As I said last week, I can't see this problem going away. That's because the Government is making changes, not only to save money but also because it believes there isn't enough competitive sport in schools. The people who run the SSPs vehemently disagree with this. Somebody must be wrong.

That's why I see a u-turn ahead. The problem the Government has is that every time it and London 2012 start talking about the sporting legacy of the Games, criticis will simply point to the SSP cuts and dismiss any initiative as meaningless.

Without an effective sport's system in schools, 2012's talk means nothing, they will say.

And it's interesting that schools and former sports stars have been so quick to get the petitions going - and also that the subject has landed at Prime Minister's Questions so fast.

This story isn't going away in a hurry.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adrianwarner/2010/11/2012_legacy_could_be_left_mean.html

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