Sport and the left… August 8, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
Here’s a repost in its entirety of a long and thoughtful comment by Jolly Red Giant which engages with the above. He raises one small caveat to contextualise it when he writes “I would suggest there are two separate issues – 1. How to encourage young people to get exercise and the role of PE in schools, and 2. the role of sports within society and how sports should be organised within society”.
In last 30 years in particular sport has become dominated by money – it is the sole focus of the IOC, most of the sports federations and all the leading athletes.
There is a difference between team sports and sports clubs and individual competition. Individuals can dominate particular sports for a limited period but eventually age catches up with competitors and they are replace by the new kid on the block. Team sports allow for ongoing and continuous domination by the better supported and wealthier clubs which makes them attractive to ownership by the ruling capitalist elites and multinational media conglomerates like Sky. This is demonstrated by the buying up of English soccer clubs by American conglomerates. The American conglomerates are buying these clubs as investments intended to generate profits. The Arab takeover of clubs appears to be based on a different pretext – namely trying to dominate by sheer wealth, throwing money at the clubs in an attempt to dominate in the same way they have attempted to dominate horse-racing with stables like Godolphin.
I was watching something on tv this morning and they spoke about a soccer player in the 1950s who dropped from the old English first division to play non-league football because he could earn more as a part-timer in non-league than the football league salary cap of £25 a week would allow. These days the likes of Wayne Rooney can earn more in a week than the entire paying budget of a Conference team like Ebbsfleet where full-time professional players can earn as little as £200 per week. In order to prevent the super-rich clubs dominating in sports like soccer salary caps are crucial, provided they also include a minimum wage for players.
Right-wing always go on about competition and how socialists oppose ‘competition’. This is crap. There is nothing wrong with competition providing the competition is about is about striving for improvement and advancement. Capitalist competition is all about destruction, about driving your competition into the ground and striving for a monopoly position. In sports today events are dominated by ‘sponsors’ and the media – all we have to do is look at the Olympics. Spectators arre prevented from bringing lunch packs and drinks into events in order to force them to buy McDonalds ar the products of other ‘sponsors’. People are not allowed to video or photo events because of ‘copyright’ etc. The IOC is dominated by financial considerations, corruption, political maneuvering etc and little to do with sport which is merely a vehicle to be used.
Referring to comment by Fergus about national jingoism, I think we are somewht more aware of it because of all the ‘Team GB’ hype based around the Olympics in London and the BBC’s coverage. I think it grates on us a bit more than it would on others. With the probable exception of some of the Americans I think most of the athletes have participated in a sporting spirit. Many of these athletes would know one another well from regular competition and many would actually train together.
I agree with Jim to a degree about the need to completely revise physical activity in school. I would approach it slighly differently. I believe there needs to be daily compulsory, non-competitive exercise for all school students. The majority of students do not like competitive sports and do not like participating in PE classes which tend to involve team sports because of class sizes. This is an example of the short-sightedness of capitalism where spending extra creating an environment where school students would engage in exercise on a daily basis would result in massive savings in health expenditure 30+ years later. The opposite is happening – a local school because of cutbacks have stopped using the nearby local leisure centre because it cannot afford to pay the rent of the gym. This has resulted in the school now using the school gym for PE classes which is about a third the size of the leisure centre further restricting what students and do and leading to more students opting not to participate in PE classes. At the same time the community run leisure centre is struggling financially losing income from local school and suffering cuts in local council grants.
Coupled with compulsory exercise there should be major expansion in school sports. Recent cutbacks have resulted in drastic cuts in competitive sports. Schools no longer receive substitution cover for teachers traveling with sports teams and in most schools competitive inter-schools sports are now dependent on teachers agreeing to voluntarily cover teachers absent for sports events. In most other cases schools are simply opting out of competitive sports leading to a drop in student participation in sports.
School sports are mainly focussed on team sports and an effort needs to be made to develop individual sports as well. There should be a greater use and planning of association coaches actively participating in schools. Students showing talent and promise should be invited to regular elite training sessions and competitions. Tutoring should be made available for students in elite camps.
Ireland has ample wealth to provide significant community owned and developed sports facilities. One of the most annoying aspects of the development of facilities in this country is the parochialism of certain sporting organisations who will happily use taxpayers money and community donations to to build and develop facilities and then restrict who can use them. Why can’t Croke Park and Landsdowne Road be shared by the GAA, the FAI and the IRFU. It would be a much better idea for GAA matches that attract a crowd of 30-40,000 to be played in Landsdowne Road than a half empty Croke Park. Similarly in Limerick – the GAA ground has a capacity of about 50,000, Thomond Park has 27,000. Th Markets Field could easily be renovated to accomodate an 8-10,000 capacity and sports rotated between all three depending on expected attendances.
Korea are no.1 in the world in archery. Every workplace has it own archery team. Workers are provided with paid time off of work for training and competition. Those who show elite talent are paid full-time to engage in an intensive long-term training programme. The objective is to develop a long-term strategy to ensure continued excellence in the sport. A similar approach was adopted in the former Eastern bloc countries until sport became a pawn in the cold war and the athletes were tanked up with drugs.
Sports can be infectious – it can raise people’s spirits (the prime example in this country was the impact of the Irish participaton in Euro 88). Active competitive sport can encourge increased participation in sport by wider sectors of the community and increased attendance at sporting activities. Sport is one of the most beneficial activities human beings can engage in across all spheres of society, social, cultural and physical.
Finally, local sports facilities and leisure facilities should be available to the local community free of charge. One of the biggest inhibitors to the use of leisure facilities by the general population is the cost. Similarly admission prices for sporting events prevents people for attending sports contests. Funding for sports and leisure facilites should come from central funds – from the health budget. Elite training facilities and programmes should be developed to assist elite athletes. Workplaces and colleges should facilitate full-time elite athletes. Certainly accept donations for the use of leisure facilities and for spectator admission but nobody should be prohibited from such activities because of lack of finance.
Of course none of this is possible under capitalism. It doesn’t fit in with the establishment’s agenda of creating a passive audience paying large sums of money to watch overpaid athletes perform for the benefit of advertisers and media moguls. While watching these sports, audiences are conditioned to consume vast quantities of unhealthy products. The general population is not incentivised by elite sports to engage in sporting activity but to simply spend money while increasingly becoming couch potatoes. The conglomerates couldn’t care less about obesity, their concern is profits and private health care will later cash in on the consequential health crisis that is increasingly becoming evident.
A lot of interesting points raised above but a glaring issue not mentioned at all is discrimination against women in sport, with the vast majority of public and private investment and general esteem going into male athletes. The latest example of this at the Olympics was the more successful female Japanese and Australian soccer and basketball teams being flown to London in economy when the men travelled business class and the pathetic attempts to force female boxers to wear miniskirts.
Currently reading an interesting book (http://www.amazon.com/Playing-With-Boys-Separate-Sports/dp/0195167562) that argues compulsory sex segregation and the undervaluation of female sports is one of the remaining major bastions of male power in society. For instance, successful sportsmen commonly go into politics and the disproportionate training of young men to excel in sport encourages them to succeed in other areas.
By contrast, women’s sports are structured to ensure they are perceived as inferior including through unnecessary gendered differences between male and female versions of the same sport to make them appear ‘easier’. For instance, women’s tennis matches (and many other female sports such as boxing) are shorter despite the fact that the gap between men and women is smallest in endurance events (marathons compared to 100m sprints) – or in the case of ultrarunning and ultralong distance swimming often disappears altogether. Similarly, female gymnastics emphasises ‘feminine’ attributes like grace and elegance while male gymnastics emphasise upper body strength. Sometimes these differences have nothing to do with physicality e.g. international chess and bridge tournaments are gender segregated!
I’m not sure what the solution is but I think there should continue to be male and female versions of sports in cases where men/bigger people generally have major advantages – but perhaps these could be based on non-gender-defined attributes like weight-based divisions similar to what they have in boxing (or a combination of weight/strength?). But male/female or size/strength-based versions of sports would need to be equally valued with equal funding.
At the same time, women should be allowed compete in ‘male’ sports if they want to and this should be the case from childhood right up to professional sports. In fact, the sexes should only be separated in certain sports where this is absolutely necessary for genuine physical reasons and this could be based on size/ability rather than gender. The principle would be similar to not assuming that ‘white men can’t jump’ andall black men can, whereas currently the assumption is that all women can’t compete with all men when many athletic women are better at sports than many unathletic men.
A size/ability-based approach could also work the other way round as it would allow smaller or more graceful men to compete in events like ‘women’s’ gymnastics. Adopting this kind of approach could really make a difference in breaking down gender stereotypes.
Worth having a look at how korfball was welcomed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korfball
On the gender co-participation point, that seems to fly in the face of the stated position of advocates of female-only events as a boon to female participation … for example, the argument that if the Flora Womens Mini-Marathon relaxed their ban on male runners, then many women would feel less comfortable running and their numbers would dwindle, defeating the whole purpose of the event.
On the undervaluing of elite female sports – this is a direct result of men choosing (a) to spend a much higher proportion of their disposable income on tickets, replica kit, pay-channel subscriptions etc., and (b) to direct that spend largely at male sports.
Short of requiring women to be more interested in elite female sports, and to back that interest up through their leisure spending, there is not much that can be reasonably done about the funding disparity.
The thing to remember is that elite/professional sport does not exist in a vacuum, but just like any entertainment industry depends totally on an interested and engaged public to sustain it. Now the rules that govern these sports have evolved over time to improve the spectacle (e.g. eliminating the back-pass in football). So changing the nature of a sport to conform to a political agenda would also be possible, but you cant force the fans to actually be interested in light-bantamweight co-ed rugby or whatever.
Finally on the gap between men and women being less for marathons compared to 100m sprints, if I read the relevant world records correctly, the gender gap in the former is 9.49% in the former and 9.32% in the latter – pretty much a rounding error.
It’s not so much the world records of the 100m sprint vs marathon, but that the gap between the average fe/male marathon runner and the average fe/male sprinter is less, or to put it another way that with 100 people running in a city marathon, a lot more women will feature in the top end of the field than if you did the same thing with sprints. This is a generally recognised thing that the more endurance-based events become, the better women tend to do relative to men.
On the esteem/investment thing being due to men being more interested in sports, that’s a classic chicken/egg scenario and you could make identical arguments about why there are more men in politics i.e. they’re more interested in it, they have more role models, they have more free time because they don’t spend as much time looking after kids and they won’t do their share of the housework etc. etc. All these things happen in an existing social context and are not ‘natural’.
Arguing against compulsory sex segregation in general also wouldn’t mean you couldn’t still have some female-only events like the mini-marathon but that sex segregation should not be the norm and where it exists should be voluntary and to the benefit of the historically discriminated against group i.e. women!
It’s interesting dmfod. I had similar thoughts watching a lot of the contests, wondering why there weren’t more mixed competitions.
… but that the gap between the average fe/male marathon runner and the average fe/male sprinter is less, or to put it another way that with 100 people running in a city marathon, a lot more women will feature in the top end of the field than if you did the same thing with sprints.
I would love to see some hard data to back that up.
The problem with comparing average marathon runners against average sprinters would be finding a decent sample size of the latter group.
Distance running is a mass-participation sport because its very accessible, requires virtually no facilities, is open to all ages/body types, and is one of the very few sports where randomers can compete in the same event as world and Olympic champions (even if the elite runners get prioritized at the starting line).
On the other hand, sprinting requires a very particular physique and specialized track facilities. So compared to distance running, recreational/hobbyist sprinting is rare, and any comparison would be riddled with selection-effects.
For elite performance, the gender gap is actually very steady across the range of Olympic distances, of the order of 9 to 10%.
The other interesting thing is that this gap has been very steady since the early 1980s. Prior to about 1983, the gap had rapidly narrowed, reflecting increased female participation in elite training programs, and unfortunately also state-sponsored doping programs in countries such as the old DDR, which concentrated on women as the female standards of the time were seen as low-hanging fruit. The outcome in that case was some transitory prestige for the Honecker regime, but a life-time of health problems for the abused women.
… they’re more interested in it, they have more role models, they have more free time because they don’t spend as much time looking after kids and they won’t do their share of the housework
If household division of labour was the actual issue here, then we would expect to see similar interest levels in and discretionary spending on sport from young men and women in the pre-household-formation stages of their lives (i.e. teenage to mid-twenties range). A quick look around at any sports event, or a count of the number of replica jerseys being worn in any social context, could quickly prove that this is not the case, not even close.
… sex segregation should not be the norm and where it exists should be voluntary and to the benefit of the historically discriminated against group i.e. women!
Given that the elite gender-gap has remained steady since the early 80s in most Olympic sports, the only way that co-ed elite sports would be of benefit to women would be by introducing a handicapping system or other form of results manipulation to ensure a roughly equal number of female ‘winners’. The problem with that is that such tokenism would likely kill off wide public interest/engagement in the sport. And without wide public interest, the Olympics would go back to being a nice niche interest for Chariots of Fire types.
This article gives some info on Imperialism and Irish Sport. http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/volume6/issue1/features/?id=180
On a footnote. GAA uses a much bigger area. A rugby friend pointed this out to me.
http://socialistparty.net/comment/1010-fai-record-seven-clubs-gone-bust-in-six-years
“FAI: Record seven clubs gone bust in six years
John Delaney, the chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland, has announced that he is to take a pay cut of 10% which brings his salary down from €400,000 to €360,000. Even with his pay cut Delaney will be payed more than the prize money for the entire League. It cost €19,000 euro to enter the league yet if a club finishes fourth in the league they will receive a measly €15,000 euro. Delany could pay for €4,500 worth of Irish fans’ drinks in Poland, while at the same time Monaghan are allowed to fold because of debts of €6,000.
Monaghan United have dropped out of the League of Ireland and at present Dundalk will be added to the list of clubs that have gone to the wall on the FAI’s watch.
It is quite clear that the FAI are only motivated by the glamour and money of the national team, investing only a fraction of resources into its local league.
More people play football than any other game in the country. Football in Ireland should be flourishing but at national league level it is in serious difficulty. Since the FAI has taken over the running of the League in 2007, seven clubs have gone bust.
To save the game firstly, investment from the government and the FAI must be put into grass roots football and local clubs. This means investing in facilities and player development, not in the wages of Chief Executives.”
That’s disgraceful. That gobshite Delaney is over doughnutting at Katie Taylor’s fights now as well when she’s had no toilet in her gym despite being world champion since 2006. In typical Irish golden circle style it turns out he’s also VP of the OCI! Wonder how much he gets for that.
Interesting article here about “talent spotting” by UK Sport to win medals at London 2012:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/09/building_an_olympian/
Is it just me or does it seem very cynical/ruthless?
Interesting comments to the article about sport in schools.
A suggestion. Auction 10% of the tickets for big matches on Ebay. Put the extra made over the cover price into sport for the young. I am sure GAA, Rugby and Soccer here would raise quite a bit of money this way. It would end the yearly moan about touts selling tickets. If some moron of a millionaire wants to spend 1000€s on tickets so much the better.