England Finds 2012 Olympics Don’t Spur Exercise

Here is an excerpt from a sad, but utterly predictable, article on the front of the New York Times online:

London's original pledge was to get two million people active ie. playing sports three or more times a week for at least 30 minutes at a time, known as the 3x30 plan. This target was quickly revised to one million. Even that target is proving elusive.
Figures issued in December by Sport England, the governing body for community sports, indicated that participation at the 3x30 level had increased by 123,000 since 2007-8, when the one million baseline was established. But that number increased by only 8,000 in the last year. At the current rate, the goal of one million new participants would not be reached in 2012-13 as hoped but more than a decade later in 2023-24.

Meanwhile, in a country that is among the fattest in Europe, the number of couch potatoes apparently continues to grow. Surveys by Sport England indicate that the number of adults doing zero moderate sports activity rose by nearly 300,000 from 2005, when London was awarded the Olympics, to the fall of 2010.

In the meantime this information came to light:
 "Research on the Olympic Games stimulating mass participation in sports has not produced encouraging results. In 2007, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the British House of Commons concluded that “no host country has yet been able to demonstrate a direct benefit from the Olympic Games in the form of a lasting increase in participation.”

To read the full article from the New York Times click here

What on earth induced the two million figure to be plucked from the air - other than it sounded good?  These days it seems that those in power are apt to make sweeping soundbytes that bear absolutely no relation to reality.  Such as David Cameron's Big Society initiative.  It seems like the thinking behind it goes no further than "if I say it shall come to pass, then it shall come to pass".  Politicians really do have God complexes!

Photo courtesy of Flickr CCL: by chrisjohnbeckett