Is Sport Meritocratic ?

The brightest amongst you may have worked out that I have a bee in my bonnet about class. Great Britain is not so great if you are working class. The public school 7%ers run the country to the exclusion of the plebs and I’m sick of it. Sport is meant to be a great leveller, but it isn’t really. I’ve dedicated my life to sport but all I’ve come across is nepotism, favouritism and corruption.

When I left Uni I wanted to work in sports. Having passed the requisite interviews, I was offered three jobs in sport where I was told I had to work for free for between 3-6 months. I protested but said prospective employers said they could get people to do it. I pointed out that only public school monkeys could live off the peanuts. It didn’t go down well and I had to get a proper job until a few years later I’d invested wisely and began erotically disrobing allowing me to be a full time athlete.

You’d think the athlete would just be assessed on his merits, but no that is a fallacy. Prior to going on my athlete journey, I looked at working in Football but just found inverse snobbery. It sickened me. I never watched it or took an interest in it again after that. Just individual sports for me – no excuses there or so I thought. When I got a little old for Track and Field (or in truth my club foot said no more) I branched out into other individual sports. I looked at Boxing but found a clique so tight I couldn’t breathe. I recommend reading David Matthews’ ‘Looking for a Fight’ to get a flavour. I won a national powerlifting title and applied for a Lottery grant to go the World Champs. Of course I’m an autistic, disabled (well club foot), working class, socially awkward type with no friends in the institution hoping my performance would be judged on its merits. How do you think that fared ? Exactly !

I drifted into Indoor Rowing, I did ok I suppose. I set two world records for the 100m and the 1 minute distance. One of my fellow competitors from across the pond tells me one day I must go to British Rowing and ask to have a go on ‘slides’. There are separate record categories apparently as slides mimic on-the-water rowing and there is a different ‘catch’. American Jeff assures me all I need to do is turn up and have a go and I’ll break the British record for my weight as I’d be so much faster than the public school record holder. ‘But I don’t know what slides are, Jeff’ I protest. ‘Just go to British rowing and have a go’ he says. ‘Ok, I’ll try’ I say.

I approach British rowing asking if I can just turn up at their headquarters and borrow some slides for 15 seconds or so. They insist they don’t have any. ‘But, you are British rowing’ I say. ‘You host the British Indoor Rowing championships every year’. They persist with the fiction that they don’t hold any such piece of equipment or have access to it. They suggest I write to some clubs. I wrote to 6, only three replied. Of those that did the response only varied in semantics not intent. My favourite reply curtly asked ‘Who do you represent?’ My response of ‘me, myself and I’ mustn’t have been very welcome. I bought my own slides (circa £300 just to prove a point) because I received no favourable reply offering assistance. I broke the record by nearly a second and a half (or nearly ten percent). Who said sport was meant to be inclusive ?

As I’ve just depressed you with that story of non inclusivity, I’m not sure I should mention that I bought a Wattbike Pro, found out my power output was on the lower end of ‘World Class’ and then approached British Cycling. I’m getting depressed even thinking about it. A story for another time perhaps. Also don’t start me on what happens when having earned enough to work for free (at a modest age) you offer your services to the sports governing bodies. I actually got my MP involved who was sympathetic, but his attempts to get the Sports Minister to meet me came to nought. Now, I’m feeling really down…..