Just had it explained

[Tay]

The problem in the UK is that so little emphasis is placed on sport. Like MMM, we only really seemed to play hockey, netball, basketball and athletics. For the blokes, it was just football, basketball, hockey and athletics. Rugby, cricket and swimming were never done. I went to a grammar school, so figured that we had a better chance than other kids to get involved with other sports.

If a child was 'sporty', it was really up to their parents to push them and get them involved with a local club. One guy at my school ended up getting a scholarship type thing to play cricket, and spent six months in the Netherlands playing there. My school was not happy about this as they felt that his education would suffer. A friend (with an extremely pushy mother) was very good at swimming and regularly travelled around the UK at weekends to go to competitions. The school would never allow her time off, so she was pretty exhausted. It didn't matter that she could potentially compete for England; her education was more important.

[red]

The problem in the UK is that so little emphasis is placed on sport.

I guess the point here is - is it a problem? I personally dont think so. I am just not that much into *spectator* sport

Although I am not particularly good, I have enjoyed *taking part* in sport over the years - but thats a different issue.

Alot is made over lack of exercise in the uk - but exercise can come in the form of gardening and walking... I'm getting most of my exercise from hand sawing logs at the moment. this point has really been driven home since I started to home educate my son - he has a disability which means taking part in sports has not been productive for him, but we often get our 'PE' in by going for a walk, or swimming.. in a non competitive environment.
Is supporting your country at sport important ? not to me. But hey live and let live an all that.

[Boots]

Well, that's a bit of an eye opener into our different cultures, I guess. Our lifestyle is very much sport immersed. Even those who don't much like something will still have a go, whether it be cricket at Christmas or soccer in the park or something.

There were sports I didn't like much to, and we had to do them. I DO NOT like endurance running, and yet one of my daughters just loves it. I do like likeweightlifting which I was introduced to as a cross training exercise and have done for many years. At 13, I was recruited by the Institute of Sport to swim, and while I still love swimming, I simply wasn't ready, or the timing wasn't right. My family was in a bit of a state, and it was all considered a bit of a hassle at the time, so I never went. I agreed not to go, because I was just plain scared I couldn't do it. Like I said, support is a very important thing... and I still wonder how I might have gone, and how that opportunity managed to intimidate and allude me.

One of our top swimmers has just retired and a massive swim complex is being built in his honour. Funds were raised to do this. He has been very clear that he will be there to encourage young swimmers and their training, and pretty much all of our high profiles remain as important promoters of the sports. There are no restrictions on our pools, that I'm aware of - other than behaviour. Anyone can go, compete and participate.

Rehab is also a part of our sporting complexes. In that, we have disability access, ramps and programs available at all pools for a variety of remedial or rehab orientated things, and our disabled athletes (that's an oxymoron if ever I heard one ) are also ranked pretty high in the world. John Maclean is a wonderful example of that. The young girl I referred to before from the small town has one arm.

It isn't a problem, Red... your right. It sounds maybe more like just different values. I respect that and it has been interesting coming to understand. To me, it sad when kids don't get to shine, do their thing or excel. I guess I am just one of those weirdos that will back anyone that is willing to have a go. At the same time though, the UK leads the way with academic advances in learning differences and dyslexia, so I'm not suggesting they pull out funding and shove it all at sport. There is some brilliant work and support taking place with that - and trying to get anything happening here with it, is like pushing a barrow uphill.

Now Jack - lets see if we can sort your boys out, shall we? As the One-dayer rolls on... Looks like a good start!

[Boots]

Oh Red - I just have to add... I once believed that walking and gardening equalled exercise, but can no longer agree. When I first arrived at the farm, I let my gym routine go because I was absolutely buggered after hauling barrows and traversing acres of land, and figured it would have to be equal. It wasn't. I was only using limited muscles and my body lost a heap of flexibility - and I gained weight.

For me - gardening and walking is a recreational activity - but it is not physical exercise. For others maybe, yes - if that is the bulk of their exercise, they may be able to refer to it as such, but I just can't get away with that... Wish I could!

[aussie]

I have to echo MillyMollyMandy's comments earlier in the thread. I think there is far too much emphasis placed on sport in australian culture, far too much wall-to-wall coverage of sport in the media, and a vast amount of taxpayers money spent on it, when health and transport infrastructure are crumbling around our ears, in NSW in particular. The amount wasted on the Institute Of Sport is just as illogical as the funds sucked up by the Arts Council. Both these bodies could be and should be funded by those with an interest in what they are set up to promote, not by the longsuffering general public..

[Muddypause]

Do you distinguish between sport, excersise and personal achievement?

I don't really understand sport much, particularly team sports. There are one or two sports I will watch if they're on TV, but they tend to be individual, rather than team sports.

But I have no idea what the air-punching thing is all about. Hearing people talking about how winning is the only option, how second place is the first of the losers, or any of a dozen other hackneyed phrases, I find frankly rather nauseating - it all seems rather pathetic, childish, even. By definition, most people in a competition must be losers; given that people place so much emphasis on the importance of winning, that can't be healthy, and seems to be out of touch with reality.

There seems to be some need to talk up one's competitiveness (you get similarly embarassing nonsense spoken by politicians 'life coaches', business trainers, etc.). I'm not sure if this is just people living up to some percieved expectation, or whether they truly believe what they say. But it doesn't make any sense to me. 'Winning' is such a transitory thing, and actually, what has been won? Winning a race or a cricket match means what? How long do you 'win' for - a minute; a day; a week?

Personal achievemnet, however, is something different. Trotting around a marathon course in a couple of hours is an extraordinary thing to be able to do; so is lifting half a ton above your head. Not sure what the actual point of being able to do those things is, but it undoubtedly requires an impressive level of commitment to achieve them. But we can't all do those things, and it's difficult to see how they are a greater achievement than, say, being able to feed yourself on your own grown food, or educate your own children, or carve something exquisite. Surely the point is, that whatever you feel you should apply yourself to, you aspire to do it to the best of your ability.

Getting excersise is different again. It's good to use these bodies of ours, and I can see that there must be an intimate relationship with our overall health and happiness. I have to admit to being less committed to this sort of thing than perhaps I should be, and now that Boots has removed a decent walk or digging the garden (all 10 square feet of it) from the 'excersise' equation, I'm even lazier than I thought I was.

[Boots]

Winning is not the only option... hmmm, well I guess there are other options. Giving up, Ignoring or denying, or not getting there and having another go.

I like green things right? That's quite a challenge in itself over here... I plant a seed and don't really care whether it blooms into flower or produces fruit or a veg, because I like green, my goats eat green things and everyone is happy... So I've had my win and reached my goal. Someone else plants a seed, and they are hungry, they want something to eat. Their goal is different, so to experience a win they need that seed to grow into a lovely cabbage or corn cob or whatever... and when it does they experience a win. If it doesn't they take one of the other options.

A win feels good. Its personal and individual. Could be in the cup of tea someone gives you made just how you like it. Could be getting to the top of a mountain you've been looking at for yonks, or it can be about developing an ability, or accumalating a bank account. Or building your own water butt.

Losers? I don't know too many of them. Can't think of any. I do know a few defeatists, but that's different.

You know... Jacks boys 'lost' todays game, but their boy Bond took the meanest hat trick!!! They can't walk away from something like that and feel like losers. No way. It wouldn't matter what someone else called them. They did it. They left the losers behind at primary school. I think you might be forgetting that a love of playing the game is what got them there in the beginning.

I don't know about anywhere else, but if we cared about trophies, do you think we'd let England take the wee pot when we win it? Matters little. The Brits want to give it to us....LOL... We don't give a hoot about it. Tis just another hassle we have to dust and build a box for!

[red]

Oh Red - I just have to add... I once believed that walking and gardening equalled exercise, but can no longer agree.

ah well depends if taking up gardening and walking replaces other exercise or is new - I did nto go to the gym before so the extra exercise I have now take up with the building projects, gardening, sawing of wood and the fact that we moved all our furniture ourselves has meant a dramatic change for me - and in fact although my eating habits have remained the same, i have lost over a stone in weight (stone = 14 pounds) - so like i said. guess it depends if its extra or instead .

but I guess my point was more that 'sport' can put some people off 'exercise' - and I think that is a real shame - alot of people really hated having to do sport at school, and it takes them a long time to discover other forms of exercise. My son, who has a muscle disorder, could not take part effectively in sport when in school, but now we are at home, we take exercise that suits.

[Muddypause]

Winning is not the only option... hmmm, well I guess there are other options. Giving up, Ignoring or denying, or not getting there and having another go.

But isn't that just defining life in a polarised dimension? Is the only alternative to the bi-polar of 'winning' and 'losing' just another type of defeat?

See, I think you're mixing up several different things that I've found it necessary to separate in my understanding of life the universe and all the rest of it. Winning; personal achievement; success... They're not the same things. Winning may be defined as personal achievement, but personal achievement is not necessarily winning.

And when I make that cup of tea, I am in no sense winning. I'm pretty sure, also, that the teabag doesn't feel vanquished as it sits in the bottom of the mug, feeling all the sorrows of defeat and plotting its comeback.

I don't want to compete with anyone, and don't see why I should be considered in a context of 'losing' either. More and more I find that if I get caught up in the concept of winning, and confuse it with success, or achievement, or even hang my own value as a person on that peg, then it always does me harm. Winning is just one of the many things I can't figure out.

This is something I realise I've struggled with in the past - exams, sports, vocationally, socially; always being expected to win; defining 'success' in terms of being arbitrarily better than others, when I've never really had any concept of what winning means. Do we build a better society by fighting wars to see who wins, or rather by working together to see what we can achieve? If Easy Jet stopped trying to battle Ryanair for the biggest market share maybe they could sort out a sane approach to air transport. If Ford were not fighting GM, and instead they worked together to achieve their collective best, maybe we would have less polluting, more planet-friendly cars. Maybe we would have transcended the car altogether.

When Paula Radcliffe wins a marathon, that is a remarkable personal achievement, and one that I am in considerable awe of. But it seems madness to then say that someone else who finishes a little later is simply a loser. For all we know that may represent an even greater personal achievement.

Struggling to win on school sports day inevitably meant I was always a loser (along with most of the others, of course). But yet it was the most senseless thing - my body has never been capable of running fast or hurling things a long way. Why ever does anyone ever presume that because one kid can run fast then that's the measure for all of us? The whole exercise of winning had absolutely no relevance to me at all. The whole point of sports at school seemed to be to prove that we weren't all as physically capable, which inevitably meant that it became a form of torture for some of us. 'Winning' was simply a foreign language.

But I could do modest things with my hands - woodwork, metalwork. I was never in competition with the wood or the metal; it was about learning to understand it, understanding what I was capable of, how I could do it better. I didn't win when I made a table lamp or a toasting fork, but I did achieve something.

What interests me is doing things well, aspiring to do them better, learning a bit more, understanding how it all fits together... That's got nothing to do with victory, or proving my worth, or being better than anyone else.

Right, now I'm off to slay a teabag, and conquer a few biscuits.

[Tay]

Excellent post, Muddy.

I'll just point out that I am not sporty in any way, never participate in any type of sport, and rarely watch it. Rugby union is the only team sport that I'll watch; I prefer solo sports such as motorsport.

While I personally couldn't care less about sport, I appreciate that for a lot of people it is important. Whether it is a child that wants to be part of a team or an adult who is trying to achieve for themself. I despise the football culture in the UK of 'we won', 'you lost -you toilet' etc. It seems to be about winning cups and gaining money in the UK.

Now I live in France, I see a different side to sport. Here, the country really gets behind its teams or individuals. News stories are often dedicated to outstanding achievements. The emphasis in France seems to be in taking part, rather than winning. Perhaps the fact that stupid sums of money aren't 'given' to sportspeople makes the French people appreciate them for what they achieve. I remember only too well conversations amongst colleagues saying something along the lines of "we bought him for 800 billion trillion pounds - you couldn't afford him. Ha!"

[Boots]

Am sure I responded to this! Bugger. Eyes are hanging out of my head and dawn has arrived alongside the braying of the donkeys...

I think we need further word dissemination to explain my feeling of a win, as opposed to winning... Competition and Sportmanship.

All that talk about winners and losers is competitiveness. Makes me think of IRAQ

Enjoying the game, appreciating the skills, recognising the team values, appraising your opponent, and giving your individual best while you play the game (which can extend to any game... board games... game of life...) is sportsmanship.

Makes me think of two terms my kids use to describe situations sometimes...
They say "He/She is a good sport"
or "He/She is a bad loser.

Its my guess bad losers compete, so they get stuck in the loss and find it difficult to find a win in it.

Prolly not making sense. Got to go to bed. 'NIght.

[pskipper]

I think you can have the feeling of success without having 'won'. Surely the satisfaction of a job well done (or the sprouting of a seedling) is less about winning or victory but that quality that seems to be missing in modern life, pride in good work.

Well that's my tupenny worth :)

[Muddypause]

Am sure I responded to this!

Ah! I thought you just weren't talking to me.

I reckon that, for the most part at least, we may be talking about much the same thing, here, but expressing it in ways that we understand differently.

Enjoying the game, appreciating the skills, recognising the team values, appraising your opponent, and giving your individual best while you play the game (which can extend to any game... board games... game of life...) is sportsmanship.

Weeeelll...

OK, then! I have been known to play the odd game of cribbage, and quite enjoy it.

But I do absolutely reject the 'game of life' notion. It seems the most damaging of ideas. I don't want to feel that I am playing life; I'm damned if I should have to compete at being alive. I don't want to try to beat anyone at it, or get the better of them. I'm not looking for some devious advantage, or get to the finishing post first (I don't really know what that would mean). I don't want to somehow have to show that I am 'better' than anyone else. I really can't see life as a proving ground. I'm just doing whatever I do. Some things will work and make me smile, other things won't.

Sometimes I'll just fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way that would appal 'successful' people - y'know; the 'winners'. But whatever I do I'm going to die in the end. Is that losing?

Makes me think of two terms my kids use to describe situations sometimes...
They say "He/She is a good sport"
or "He/She is a bad loser.

Worst of all is a bad winner.

Its my guess bad losers compete, so they get stuck in the loss and find it difficult to find a win in it.

Maybe it would be better not to limit ourselves with that dichotomy. Life's too short to need to win all the time. I absolutely reserve my right to fail at things, be wrong, mess things up, learn nothing, misunderstand things, get nowhere and be ignored. And to see none of that in terms of winning or losing. It just is what it is.

[Wombat]

Yes, I think the "sport" analogy can be taken a bit far, and not really be representative of the way things work.

The way I make my money is OHS and many years ago I attended a "motivational" meeting with the CEO of the company I was working for, along with many other OHS professionals from all over the company. The words of the Great Man were something like -

" No we don't expect you to do all the work, the line managers have reesponsibility but you are like coaches..................and you know what happens to the coach when the team doesn't win!"

Motivated me! I dug out my resume straight away!

Nev

[Boots]

I guess I see sport in a lot of things... when my kids are being bugged by others, or a teacher is doing the whole stand over thing, or whatever... I tell them they "don't have to play along", and if they choose to - "then keep it friendly".

I guess that's how I look at things. I have even been heard telling my animals, "Hey, I'm not here to play right now..." The galah got out yesterday and wanted to play 'chase me everywhere for a while before I go back in', and despite my objection I found myself caught up in the game for a bit.

The fact that I finally propped the door open and he went back in by himself, was not a moment of jubilation or supremacy... it was relief, because I did not want to find my phone or iron cord chewed through and I had to be somewhere.

I think people play games. I think animals play games. I think life is a LOT of games.

I tell the kids I work with..."Oi, don't play with me on this. Be honest and we'll save a stack of hassle." and I think they soon work out when I am playing (teasing, laughing, stirring them up, egging them on, whatever) and when I'm not. When I need them to be honest (for example) and they are not - we stop playing - they lose the support of their team, mate, coach whatever the heck role they have me in, and we will re-enter or restart the game when the rules are respected again. The kids have rules. I have rules, and how we negotiate them is part of the game of life.

We are playing now, I reckon. There will be no loser - well, I certainly would like to think there won't be. If I thought there might be, I'd stop playing, because I am not here to put folks down or stand over them. I am quite happy to look upon everyone just as they are, or as I come to know them. A win is meant to go around. It comes in turns. Doesn't matter what you play.

When one person can't play, someone else often does. Life is like that, I think. I was tired today, and didn't play with the shopkeeper next door like I normally would when I am there. Usually we find time to have a laugh and she lets off steam about whatever is going on for her, and I nod a lot while I enjoy a coffee outside in the breeze. Today, I was tired. I didn't want to play, and she came in worried that she had done something wrong. When I assured her I just had a heap to do and was having a short day, she wandered back outside and I heard the game continue with the lady from the shop on the other side.

Everyone still got their little win. I got my work done. She still got to let off steam and life went on. But there was never a competition that led to those wins. Just a sense of... what??.... Accomplishment? Needs were met, maybe? Not sure how to describe it. But the wins I am referring to are not about competing, I'm pretty sure of that.


On the losing and dying thing:
This too comes down to how we play the game, I think. Some folks look upon others dying as a loss, for themselves. I have heard folks say 'such a waste' and I always consider that a really disrespectful and superior statement. As if they consider themselves worthy of passing judgement upon the persons living contribution as unsatisfactory or incomplete. Many have said it about Steve Irwin. I believe we go when our work is done and no-one comes to life, or leaves this life, without making a contribution or difference. So... death is another win to me. I guess it is the ultimate acknowledgement that I have passed things on well enough to actually 'pass on'. That probably won't make sense, because no-one seems to understand the peace I experience at funerals, or how I can speak at them without crying. I am happy for the person, privileged to have known them, and I spend a long time thinking about what they passed on to me and others around them, and how I will practice it and honour the passing of it.

There's a win in most things I reckon - but it does depend on how you play the game.