What Lessons Can Hong Kong Learn from the success of Team GB at Rio 2016?
(Image provided by Sportsroad)
As most
readers of this blog will know, I grew up in England. As a young child in the
late 1960s and early 1970s I instinctively knew that sporting success was part
of GBs heritage and culture, it was ingrained and just acknowledged. With, what
in retrospect seems like arrogance, we believed we had ‘invented’ most sports
and had a right to be good at them. Well, we had just won the Football World
Cup! I grew up in a sporting household, my father had been a professional
cricketer and physical education teacher. Together with my older brother, I
spent every waking hour, when not at school, playing as much sport as possible
- cricket, football, swimming, table tennis, snooker, you name it we played it.
In my formative years, school sport was important too. We played against other
schools after hours during the week and at weekends we often played for the
school in the morning and a local club team in the afternoon. Millions of boys
were just like me – we all wanted to be the next Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton or
in my brother’s case Geoffrey Boycott.
And then
towards the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s there was a change of culture.
The liberal-minded people in charge of education decided that competition was
bad, because not everyone was capable of winning! Winning was suddenly bad
apparently. This change of policy, coupled to teachers refusing to take
extra-curricular activities because of a dispute with Margaret Thatcher, led to
a steep and immensely damaging decline in GB sport. In a short space of time,
we went from world beaters to a nation of heroic failures, personified
perfectly by ski-jumper ‘Eddie the Eagle’ in 1988 (if you haven’t seen the film
by the way, watch it; it’s brilliant). By that time I had followed my father’s
footsteps into a career in sport and for someone who loved sport and reveled in
its many intrinsic benefits, the decline was humiliating and depressing.
The
slide was brought into sharp focus in 1996 when at the Atlanta Olympics GB
finished 36th with a mere 9 medals in total and only 1 gold. That
was won by rowers Pinsent and Redgrave whose success was based solely on
supreme talent, enormous physical prowess and extreme personal sacrifice. It
owed absolutely nothing to the sporting establishment. Sport received very
little political support or funding.
Wind the
clock forward 20 years to the Rio Olympics. Team GB finished second in the
medals table (ahead of China), smashed their targets and became the first ever
country to increase the number of medals won having hosted the previous Games. Of
the 366 athletes that went to the Rio Games for Team GB, 129 of them - just
over 35% - returned with a medal, including every member of the 15-strong track
cycling team. Of 31 sports, GB finished on the podium in 19 - a strike rate of
just over 61%. In terms of golds, GB was way ahead of the pack, finishing with
at least one in 15 sports, more than any other country, even the United States.
This is
a remarkable turn-around and has left many people around the world scratching
their heads wondering – ‘how have they done it’?
Success in sport is not rocket science. I believe it
only needs two things; cultural significance and resources.
Dealing
with resources first, it is absolutely clear that the catalyst for the profound
improvement and success of GB sport has been the introduction of the National
Lottery and the use of a set percentage of funds raised specifically for sport.
This has gone into; building world class facilities, the hosting of major
events (Commonwealth games 2002 and 2014 and the Olympic Games 2012), funding
for Governing Bodies and to pay the training and competition expenses of
individual athletes. National Sports Associations have been able to employ
expert coaches and to fund the sports science support services that are so
vital to athlete progression.
No sport
demonstrates this better than cycling. GB dominated track cycling in Rio, winning
six of 10 disciplines and collecting 11 medals in total, nine more than the
Dutch and Germans in joint second. GB success in cycling transcends the
Olympics too as demonstrated by Chris Froome’s success in the Tour de France.
Their amazing success has been built on a strategy of ‘marginal gains’ where
basically nothing, and I mean nothing (google it and you will see what I mean),
has been left to chance. There is no doubt in my mind that with the right
resources their success can be copied and replicated. However it is impossible to
do so without money.
What
hasn’t attracted as much attention as the impact of the National Lottery is
that there has also been more investment in school sport in the UK. Specialist
Sports Colleges have been established and importantly, links have been made
between schools and local sports clubs. Pathways to NSA talent identification
programmes have therefore been facilitated.
In terms
of cultural significance, what is interesting is that the success of Team GB i.e.
elite sport has been achieved without a corresponding increase in mass
participation. Grass roots participation in sport has actually declined in many
sports (not cycling) in the UK, even after the Olympic Games in 2012. It just
goes to show that there is no direct correlation between the absolute number of
people playing sport at the base and the level of success at the top. The
sports development continuum is not necessarily a pyramid, but more of a ladder.
The secret is identifying those with talent (at a very early age), exposing
them to the right (sporting) environment and providing them with the resources
(time and expert advice) they need to climb from one rung to the next. No stone
unturned, nil compromise.
So why
is the cultural significance of sport so important? Well for me if the
decision-makers are going to take sport seriously they need to be confident
that the majority of the population of a country appreciate that sport is
important, even if most people have no aspiration to be world-class themselves.
The majority of people in the UK know they will never win the lottery or
Olympic Gold but they are happy to buy a ticket in the knowledge that the
proceeds will go to ‘good causes’. A country needs politicians who understand
the value of sport and are prepared to develop a coherent strategy and divert
resources to make it happen. Success in sport needs to be part of a nation’s
DNA like it used to be in the UK and like, thankfully it is once again. Success
breeds success.
In terms
of Hong Kong, I just don’t see that sport has reached that level of cultural
significance (yet). It’s just not that important to people, to society and
therefore to politicians. As a result sport does not receive the same level of
recognition, priority or the all-important resources. Of course it would not be
true to say that no resources or thought go into sport in Hong Kong. We have
the HKSI for elite athletes, we have some new facilities (such as the
Velodrome) and more in the pipeline hopefully (such as a new Stadium). We have
a new Sports Commissioner who understands sport, which is a step in the right
direction. We have the SF & OC that overseas NSA activities. We have the HK
Schools Sports Federation etc. We have the HK Jockey Club that administers horseracing
and football betting and puts money into sport. In recent years the HKFA has
benefitted from additional funding as a result of a more strategic approach and
better governance, so it would be churlish for me to say that there is no
sporting culture at all.
The
reality is though that these are only strands and facets of a sporting
infrastructure. Are they enough and are they joined up as part of a coherent
sports strategy? Having witnessed firsthand the Renaissance of sport in the UK,
I would have to say ‘categorically no’. In my opinion, there are a number of
things that Hong Kong needs to do:
- The first thing is to decide whether, and to what extent, sport is important. If it’s not, that’s fine; let’s focus on something else, like commerce or tourism. But if the answer is ‘yes’, then we need to do it properly, rather than the fragmented and half-hearted way in which it is being done at the moment.
- If I were the Sports Commissioner I would go to the UK right now and borrow the blueprint.
- We then need to establish a Governmental Agency or NGO with specific responsibility for all sport across Hong Kong (like UK Sport).
- As a priority we must also prepare a Hong Kong Sports Strategy defining the priorities, objectives and targets. For example do we see sport as something for everyone for health and societal benefit or do we want to be successful on a world stage? The plan would be different depending on the agreed policy objectives. The plan should cover facilities, participation, events, structures, systems and resources.
- All of the sporting stakeholders in Hong Kong must buy-into the strategy in a coordinated way, particularly the Education system and NSAs.
- If they do so, the strategy should find ways in which they can be given the resources to implement the plan. Most NSAs in Hong Kong are significantly under-funded.
- The Jockey Club gives a lot of money to sport which is great (and I would be the first to admit that football has benefitted from this) but I think it is sometimes allocated reactively rather than strategically. Maybe now is the time to set up a fund specifically for sports activities, programmes and facilities, linked of course to the new sports strategy.
- We cannot under-estimate the importance of schools. The Education system must be at the heart of any new sports strategy. The HKSI does a great job but often by the time the athletes go there full time, it’s too late. Specialist sports schools are key, like the Singapore Sports School that helped deliver its first gold medal in swimming in Rio. If aspiring athletes are to reach the 10,000 hours benchmark by the time they are 18 they must find a way to combine intensive sports training with academic work. This is not happening now.
Hong
Kong was one of the 119 countries not to win any medals at Rio 2016, so we are
not alone. However many of the countries that did win medals have a smaller
populations than Hong Kong and less ability to provide the necessary resources.
There should be no excuses if we want to improve. It took twenty years in the
UK for the transformation to happen. In all probability it would take longer
here because we are starting from a lower base. The point is that if we don’t
make a start now, it will never happen. If Hong Kong is to enjoy any sustained success
in sport, we must all join forces to develop a sporting culture and to devote
more resources to sport.
Rio is
not Hong Kong’s ‘Atlanta’ because we have different cultural expectations, but
we must find a catalyst from somewhere.
Mark
Sutcliffe, CEO August 2016
