The view from Mount Olympus: class, race, and sport

A glossy-haired Lawrence Clarke shows off a winningly
aristocratic smile at his hunting lodge in the south of France

Earlier this week, the Independent published a grossly misrepresentative headline which asserted that Lawrence Clarke, an athlete competing for the UK in the current Olympics, wishes he hadn't been educated in Eton and had instead gone to a state school, which they were probably hoping would make it seem like Team GB were demonstrating their hatred for the private school system. In the attached article, it emerged that all Mr Clarke, Esq. (the heir to a baronetcy, incidentally, and possessor of rugged looks and shiny hair which attest to generations of good food and better breeding) was actually saying was that if he'd been to a state school, there would have been far less emphasis on the academic side of things and so he would have been able to start training earlier - if anything something of an indictment of the state school system, I would say, but there we go.

In light of earlier comments by Team GB in which they said that their current hoard of medals could be increased even further in future years by improving the apparently very lax provision of PE in state schooling, at first glance this seems like quite a silly thing to say - but then I suppose what is actually meant is that a state school education would have meant he could put the bare minimum of time into academic pursuits and instead spend all his time on training outside school. Which then leads us to the big question - how meritocratic actually is the world of sport? Is it actually possible to achieve those twee rags-to-riches storylines that sports films are so proud of in real life?

The sad fact is that the world of high-level professional sport, far from demonstrating 'good old-fashioned British working spirit' as my local paper (and no doubt the Daily Mail) keep insisting, is a world in which your chances at success are very, very much dominated by both socioeconomic background and race.

According to Lord Moynihan, head of the British Olympic Society, more than 50% of the medals at this year's Olympics were brought in by privately schooled athletes. This in itself is no surprise; private schools generally, despite Lawrence Clarke's comments, have significantly more money to spend on sports provision and can afford decent coaches (as opposed to PE teachers - we all know the old aphorism), as well as the shiny, expensive equipment required for bourgey sports like equestrianism and rowing (I don't think my school could have afforded to build a rowing lake on the playing fields). Furthermore, making the fair assumption that people who go to private schools are, on average, from richer backgrounds, their parents will also find it easier to provide these sorts of things outside of school - paying for coaching and use of facilities, for example. It is also far easier for parents to take their children out of private school for training purposes - private schools are not bound by the same sort of laws and oversight with regard to attendance as are state schools. To get coaches and equipment of the same level, and to be able to train, someone without this kind of private funding has to either be lucky in their local sports provision or find sponsorship. Whilst it may be comparatively easy to find this kind of provision locally for running and similarly common sports, for other sports it is far, far more difficult.

Other factors also contribute. It struck me recently, not for the first time, that high-level swimming seems to be exclusively the province of white and east asian people - there are very rarely, if ever, any black swimmers. I, and probably you, have often heard that physiological reasons - specifically bone density - militates against black people succeeding in the swimming pool. Apparently, though, this is largely nonsense: this article basically blows the idea apart (for those who can't be bothered: although buoyancy is a factor, most particularly when first learning to swim, it can be compensated for). A quick glance at this useful academic article will tell you that black people have, on average, higher muscle mass and longer limbs. It is possible that I am wrong in saying this, but both of these seem at first glance like they would be advantageous in swimming - perhaps even enough to offset bone density.

The fact that articles like the first one - dedicated to dispelling the idea that 'black men can't swim' - even exist in the first place probably points us towards the root cause here. There is a definite cultural belief that black people cannot swim, an idea influential enough that it produces plenty of TV programmes and online articles trying to dispel or justify it. This belief, as shown by the page I linked to, is not restricted to non-black people who do not know any better - it is a persistent part of the same collection of folk legend that tells you that being cold can cause colds, and thus has a significant effect on people's behaviour. If you believe your child will never learn to swim, why take them to lessons in the first place? If you believe you can't swim because of the colour of your skin, why even bother trying?

Of course, the situation is not restricted to black people. There is not a single non-white Team GB swimmer, and south asians in particular - who as far as I can tell from The Internet have no similar physiological explanation for this - seem to be very underrepresented at the Games given the demographics of the UK. This isn't helped by the fact that minorities in general tend to be from poorer backgrounds; it wouldn't surprise me if the swimming team were dominated by people from high-income families. Apparently it is best for swimming strength to learn when you're only four or five years old: this requires an introduction to swimming long before schools ever consider dipping you, and therefore requires a) a culture of early swimming lessons (which seems to me based entirely on anecdotal evidence to be predominantly a middle class thing) and b) the money to spend on what are actually quite expensive lessons.

These are just a few examples of how culture surrounding sport and the benefits of riches work to maintain the status quo in the Olympics - it is tempting to say that for the most part, many sports are effectively a rich person's private playground. It would be unfair not to mention the many programmes aimed at changing this - in particular, the rowing team puts a lot of effort into selecting children from state schools and providing them with training and materials - but these are the exception, rather than the rule. Sport, like everything else, has a long way to go before parental money stops being such a colossal advantage.