Sport

Whilst everybody is enjoying the spectacle of the greatest Games on earth there is one group of people who are doing their level best to spoil it. If there was a gold medal for petty political nitpicking up there on the podium would be the anti-independence politicians and commentators. In rhetoric reminiscent of Labour claims that devolution would kill the SNP ‘stone dead’, time and again over the last two weeks we have heard claims the SNP are opposed to Team GB and that every medal marks a death blow to Scottish independence aspirations. They condemn the Scottish Government for wishing our Scottish athletes well. They then criticise us when

The genius of Mo Farah was only underscored by the plodding stupidity of Downing Street’s statements about the “All Must Have Prizes” culture this weekend. If this is the culture which produced Mo Farah then surely we should be celebrating it. But the truth is that it doesn’t exist and never has done. How does David Cameron think we managed to get 28 gold medals if not through the promotion of competitive sport in schools? Mo Farah attended an inner city comprehensive his talent was spotted and encouraged. What’s wrong with that? Considering the scale of the success of London 2012, it’s no surprise that there have been attempts from

David Cameron made a spirited defence of school sport this morning when he appeared on LBC radio. Waving a sheet of paper triumphantly, the Prime Minister argued that the 20 school playing field sales that Michael Gove had signed off were actually schools that had closed, surplus fields and ‘surplus marginal school land’. He also defended the decision to remove a compulsory target for all children to take part in two hours of sport a week: Well, look, we haven’t done that, you know, sport is part of the national curriculum and we want schools to deliver sport and I think that’s very important, but frankly, and we’re putting a

Back from holiday and it seems just about the only “controversy” at these splendid* Olympic Games lies in Danny Boyle’s exhuberant opening ceremony. According to its critics it was multi-cultural crap or pap or something. And, of course, in one sense it was a hymn to multi-cultural Britain. Why else would Boyle have begun with choirs in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England (spliced with rugby footage) if not to remind the audience (in London and further afield) that the United Kingdom is not quite the same thing as England. Of course, that’s not what the critics of multi-culturalism really mean when they sneer at “multi-culti” tripe and political correctness

The discussion of Britain’s latest tennis nearly man has turned inevitably to the culture of a sport which, in this country at least, remains laughably exclusive. Asked on the Today programme why we fail to produce consistent numbers of good tennis players the tennis evangelist and comedian Tony Hawks (who knows a thing or two about what is laughable) made a good suggestion about opening up our ridiculously expensive (and often empty) courts to the public. But the debate about tennis reveals a deeper malaise. In this country we are prepared to accept mediocrity because the last thing we would dare tamper with is the class system. There is a

A pearl richer than all his tribe who, alas, loved batting not wisely but all too well. If tragedy seems too strong a term for Mark Ramprakash’s career there remains ample room for sadness when one considers the fate of the best batsman England has produced since Gooch and Gower announced themselves more than 30 years ago. The answer to the eternal question ‘What might have been?’ is rarely less than melancholy but never sadder or more frustrating than when pondering Ramprakash’s fate. The outline of his story is familiar to all who’ve followed English cricket these past 20 years: the most gifted batsman of his generation couldn’t find a

If England had won that penalty shoot out against Italy it would have been a travesty. The press has been very kind to the national team this morning, partly because — as we kept being told — ‘expectations were low’ and partly because everyone still likes (with some justification) Roy Hodgson. But from the middle of the first half onwards, England performed as poorly as I have ever seen them, and it wasn’t simply down to the might of the opposition. Indeed, the Italian defence is ponderous and porous, as we shall see when they play a team which dares, from time to time, to attack. England’s problems were partly