Wild Horses

I haven’t posted for a while but have been thinking about lots of things in relation to Judo, Martial Arts and Sport in general so I thought it was time to pull this blog out, it is smoothing I have been thinking about for a while.
I love reading and have read a number of books on Genghis Khan in recent months. I am drawn to the basic brutality of the Stepps in Russia and the hardships face day to day. In a world of hardship the punishments they had for breaking rules were even harder.

The idea of a man being torn limb from limb, imagine having a rope tied to each limb, and then these ties to horses, the riders then take the strain and your body is lifted from the ground. You feel your body stretch in four opposing directions, limbs, muscles and sinews stretch and slowly tear. It is agonising you know you can’t fight it – eventually the limbs are ripped from your body and you die in excruciating pain.

Go from that to Wimbledon where last week the LTA have their championship and most British players get knocked out in the first round. This prompted the British Minster Minister for Sport to make comment along the line of If you don’t win you shouldn’t get funded
So you want funding you have to perform, so the athlete has one rope tied to one arm – Perform or don’t get funded, a policy from GOVENERMNET imposed on British sport. It is one of the cornerstone of Elite funding in the UK.

Some sports forgo much grass roots funding and focus on Elite performance – examples Sailing and Cycling and produce results and get more money. They did this by a centralised training centre – a performance institute. So other NGB’s adopt this.

So to the opposite leg we tie a rope of centralised training.

Then funding comes along for the use of Strength and conditioning, Sports Scientists nutritionalists, all have to be ‘approved’ by the NGB, another rope another arm. Can you imagine one of the best sports psychologists wanting to work with your Olympian – only to be told if he did his funding would be cut – because the psychologist wasn’t on a government list.

Then the NGB say we know best and will manage all events and you go where we say train and compete when we say – the fourth rope. Imagine a centralised performance system where 30% of the Elite players choose to stay in their own training centres and face funds being cut.

Now in some sports say cycling and sailing all the riders of the horses are told to ride together at the same speed in the same direction – toward performance success, they get there pull the athlete – who has to work to keep up, doesn’t always get it easy but is in one piece with Olympic success. At Bejing only one cyclist didn’t get a podium finish and that was due to a crash in the final!

However some sports in this case Judo the players don’t know who are riding the horses and those rider just seem to do their own thing – and the potential talent of the athlete isn’t utilised as the athlete and their chances of success are torn to pieces.

Think about your sport and the athletes you know – how many waste time fighting the system and how many try to change the system?