  Taekwondo I am just about still able to walk after a weekend Taekwon-do seminar. For the uninitiated, Taekwon-do is a Korean martial art that draws on shotokan karate and traditional kick-orientate Korean martial arts. I try to go to the urlLink Docklands Taekwon-do school as often as possible. The weekend seminar was led by urlLink Mr Jedut a sixth degree black belt- from Poland. He brought along some of his students who helped with the demonstrations. I understand that they train three hours a day, six days a week.
And it shows. Utterly awesome to watch, and at the same time extremely motivational. Olympics It's impossible to avoid the Olympics, but then who would want to avoid it? Good to see the South Africans in the pool defeat the Aussies (they are such good losers) and the Americans (who also know how to be gracious in defeat and modest in victory) in the mens freestyle at the weekend. And who would have thought us Brits would be so good in synchronised diving? It raises the question of why we are so bad at sports.
Certainly, the Aussies seem to have the edge over us when it comes to competitiveness and mental toughness- perhaps our softeness is the legacy of teaching non-competitiveness in schools but I think the problem lies elsewhere. There's a sense of British (English? ) fair play and sport for sports sake which I think happers us at the highest level in sport- heavens, why was Bodyline so outrageous? It was about winning ugly (years before Brad Gilbert thought of the idea). We're not good at it. The selling off of playing fields gets a great deal of attention, but certainly the playing fields of my primary school were a (vitually) unused asset.
Schools didnt celebrate sport nearly enough (although my middle school did introduce 'houses' and mine was Thompson named after the brilliant decathlete). It's really the after school sport where you get a chance to develop as an athlete, and many of the teachers stopped after school activities with the strikes in the 80s. The loss of the works' team has surely hit us hard: gone are the days when every workplace sent out three football teams and four cricket teams on an evening. It's also still the case that we dont have enough facilities in some sports (how many velodromes do we have? How many Olympic size swimming pools? ) but this is less true than it used to be: for example there are more indoor tennis courts than there used to be and far more gyms than there were ten years ago- but we are hardly up there are as a nation in tennis or weighlifting.
What can we do to reverse this decline and improve our chances of winning medals at the highest level? We need a greater pool of people playing sport. Period. How do we achieve that? That's the question. I think the large employers need to be encouraged to promote sport within their organisations.
It staggers me that there isnt a London Local Authority Games for local government employees. I am sure it would prove phenomenally popular amongst employees and residents. Clubs too, have a responsibility. They need to be more prepared to invest time and energy cultivating youngsters. I played tennis as a very young teenager for a number of years at my local club, without a hint of encouragement from any of the senior players. With a bit of training I could have been a contender.
Well perhaps not. But I might now be able to serve properly. Well serve at all, to be honest. 
