Team GB needs more working class athletes to live up to the Olympian ideal

I will start this blog by stating, as you would expect from someone who runs a boxing-based charity, I love sport. I have been active for over 45 years, whether that was football, cricket, boxing or simply to keep fit. Sport has been my anchor. 

Sport has built bonds for me that have lasted a lifetime. The caretaker of our building has been with the amateur boxing club since 1970, our latest mentor and coach boxed for us and in fact, only this weekend, I found a photo of me and him from 19 years ago.  

Sport can be a great thing.  

However, I often hear that sport is the one true meritocracy, it is diverse, classless and inclusive. Anyone can participate, summon the Corinthian spirit and play. But is this actually true?  

I think that sport, or more precisely access to sport, is dominated by class.  

Cost is a barrier to access

The recent Olympics highlighted that, like in society, we don’t have equal access to sport or sporting facilities. Cost is a barrier preventing equal access  

Some sports, such as equestrianism, rowing or modern pentathlon have such a high entry point that we know that these aren’t inclusive. But for me the issue runs much deeper.  

Many communities don’t have equal access to sport facilities. This inequality isn’t simply about not having an inner-city football pitch, it is also about not being able to travel to one. Travel is time consuming and expensive, and many families simply can’t afford it.  

I have seen some good examples of cities realising they need to provide facilities and building more in communities that are underserved, but then assigning the running of them to a private organisation who charge fees that most can’t afford.  

If you have a choice of spending your last few pounds on 20 minutes on the cross trainer or putting your cooker on, the latter is usually the option.  

How many Olympic sports are really accessible?  

Hockey, a sport in which Team GB has had Olympic success, doesn’t appear remotely diverse in terms of class or race. Facilities are often only based in private schools and, therefore, accessed almost exclusively by the middle and upper classes. However, hockey appears to me, from the outside, to be a sport that many working-class young people would love.  

It doesn’t stop at the ones mentioned, there were 32 Olympic sports at Paris 2024.  

The goal of the Olympic Movement is to ‘contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit. This requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play’.

I would question how accessible 27 of these sports are to those without privilege. The Olympics itself appears discriminatory.  

Whilst I accept there is a degree of subjectivity to some of those 27, a quick office poll doesn’t provide much disagreement. 84% of sports showcased at arguably the world’s greatest sporting event are not accessible to the working class. 

If we want to see the benefits of sport and create a population that experience good health for longer, reducing the burden on the NHS, then it needs to be accessible.  

Sport needs change from the top down 

Sport needs to be honest with itself.  

Next time we watch an event we should ask ourselves, does this represent us, all of us and if not, why? 

National Governing bodies need to be held to account, decision makers at city or national level need to be close enough to communities to ensure facilities don’t become the great white elephants of the past.  

Leadership of sport should include more from diverse backgrounds. We need to ensure that processes are reflective of what people need to access it, not what people think is needed.  

This, as we all know, isn’t a problem that’s exclusive to sport. In a recent survey working class professionals were, on average, paid £6,000 less that those from other backgrounds for the same jobs. Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised that sport echoes this trend.  

Changing sport at senior and strategic level will make a long-term difference, it would become inclusive. 

Conclusion 

We must fight for change, and I can’t wait until I see young people from council estates across the UK standing on the Olympic starting line in equal numbers to their more privileged counterparts.  

Only then would the Olympics and wider sport be the meritocracy we all deserve.  

Photo by Nicolas Hoizey on Unsplash