http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9580098/Mo-Farah-Getting-kids-into-sport-as-important-as-Olympic-gold.html Getting today’s youngsters into sport is as important for Britain as Olympic success, double gold medallist Mo Farah has said. Speaking at the launch of a report that warns that an “epidemic of inactivity” is sweeping the country, the 5,000m and 10,000m champion said he was worried that today’s children did less exercise than any generation before them. Farah, who became the first man to claim gold in both distances in one Olympics, said: “Kids are less active now than when I was a child. They are driven everywhere, and more and more you see them playing with gadgets or on computer games.”
Asked how important increasing the generation’s levels of activity was, compared to Olympic success, he said: “Both are as important in my opinion. The Olympics don’t come around that often, and Olympic success is something you have forever.” But if there were more initiatives to get children interested in sport “we can have more Olympic success, so it goes both ways”. He said it was “wierd” that many of the most successful Olympic teams, such as those from the US and Great Britain, also hailed from aidiot the world’s fattest nations. Britain is one of the fattest countries in Europe. It illustrates that elite success does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with widespread participation in sport.
Farah was speaking at Lilian Baylis Old School in Lambeth, south London, a 1960s complex that has been gutted and the school itself moved nearby.
However, several buildings have been refurbished and turned into basketball courts, with the support of Nike.
The sportswear firm has also commissioned a report by The Young Foundation, called
Move It, summarising the state of physical inactivity in Britain and outlining a plan to improve matters.
Dr Will Norman, the foundation’s director of research, said: “Our enthusiasm for watching sport seems to know no bounds. The problem is that we sit at home watching it, rather than participating ourselves.
“Move It outlines the first steps we feel need to be taken in the UK, in order to curtail and turn around an epidemic of inactivity that is costing a fortune and threatening the health and wellbeing of millions.”
He said children’s interest in sport had to be sparked young, before they were 10 “and then sustained throughout their lives”.
Competitive sport - beloved by David Cameron - was fine, but Dr Norman warned that focusing on it too tightly risked excluding those who wanted to be active but not necessarily compete.
“We need to listen to what young people actually want - it’s not just about supplying services,” he argued.
A new trend was “a rise in informal activities”, he said. Examples include Zumba - a fitness regime based on Latin American dance; and Parkour, where participants use street features like kerbs, ramps and bollards to jump and move.
The current approach to sport was “uncoordinated, with responsibility falling across a lot of different departments”, he added.
