To think most of us would struggle

[Olympia2012]

to facilitate our children in their chosen sport to reach Olympic standard

I look at these athletes and just feel the dedication to that one child and their training completely takes over the family. Mrs Daly,Murray,Tweddle etc, I take my hat off to them.

Dd used to play for a footie team. Just locally, but the dedication to just that was massive. Training,kit, getting to venues across the county etc etc. Dragging all the dc out at weekends. The expense! Petrol, food and fees.

I wonder how the average family would cope. Could you?

DS has just had his third swimming lesson. He's recently turned three and as I watched him splashing his way across the pool in a kind of desperate doggy paddle, covered in arm bands and riding one of those long foam floats I was picturing his olympic gold swimming medal in my mind and had to tell myself to get a grip.

Just a thought the only sports mum you ever see regularly is andy murrays mums she is almost as famous as he is

Yanbu I was good enough for olympics and scouted but both my parents worked and couldn't get to the training. place all the time never mind afford the costs.

My own dd1 is very into athletics but we can't even find somewhere with room to take her.

mrs Jay I had never noticed her before! I'm not a great tennis fan tbh.

And comma keep hold of that grip dream

wordfactory so true what you said, when ds1 first started playing football aged 6 every single parent stood on the sidelines.

When he got to 11 it was just me/DH and 1 other parent.

Same with dd who is 14, very few parents are there now.

Seems once they get to a certain age you have to decide if you are fully committed to the sport or not. It's a shame because a lot of his team were certainley good enough to be scouted also but it seemed, especially as they got to be teenagers, if they were left to their own devices, to get to training and matches, they simply didn't bother.

grenwich whereabouts roughly do you live? And how far are you prepared to travel? I know some fantastic athletics clubs in London and Hertfordshire who are always looking for talented enthusiastic athletes.

greenwich even, sorry

I am full of admiration for the parents but lordy would not want to do it myself.

I guess that's why there are a lot of old Millfield pupils in teamGB (or at least it seems like there are) because if you've got the money easier to send them to a boarding school which will do all the coaching/matches etc.

Very hard on other siblings and I could imagine it building up a lot of resentment if parents constantly ferrying one child around at the expense of others.

I do wonder how many as well have parents like Andy Murray whose mum was very involved in tennis anyway - must make it easier.

China has a different mindset to preparing future athelets. They have specialised schools for sport and the ferrying to competitions is done by the state. The parents effectively give up their children to the state to become atheletes. The chinese show levels of dedication to training their atheletes which in the UK we would not accept. No one cares about the future of the failed gymnastics with serious injuries or those who simply don't make the team. I fee this is morally questionable.

The average British state school does very little PE. IF a parent wants their child to do sport then they have to organise it. My son's state school only does two hours of PE a week and much of that time is spent on crowd control and supervising 30 kids getting changed. PE lessons aren't competitive and no one has the chance to break out into a sweat.

I think the reason that private schools dominate the Olympics is the sheer amount of PE that a typical private school does. The private secondary school I went to had at least an hour of complusory PE every day. The children who were better at PE did more PE after school. I hated PE and was useless at it, but I was reasonably fit as a teen.

However as a country the UK has done well in the medal table. The UK has 1% of the world's population, but is third in the medal table. Prehaps we need specialised schools where children at secondary school age can CHOOSE to train. Prehaps the free schools scheme will make it possible to set up specialist schools that allow children to train to the highest sporting and academic standards.

My cousin was in the British team for 'x'. His younger brother was sidelined - but then wasn't gifted at sport (lots of resentment there). Big brother was hugely talented and it showed at a young age. His parents weren't wealthy or 'middle class', but they did own their own business and mum was a SAHM. This helped when bb need to go to training or competitions. Unfortunately due to injury he never competed in an Olympics.

He now has a very good job teaching others what he did.

sometimes a whole family are into a sport, like the MacGreggor sisters

I imagine most Olympic compeditors come from families who are sporty anyway?

When I was a teenager, I was a bloody good rider and was competing other people's horses for them and winning regularly. However, my parents weren't loaded, couldn't afford to buy me my own horse and struggled to fund petrol and riding lessons (I spent hours mucking out at the local stables to earn an hour a week lesson!), plus they both worked full time, so didn't have hours to spare to run me all over the country.

Without financial backing and a lot of dedication it's practically impossible to get a "normal" child to Olympic standard in most sports I would say, unless they are lucky nough to win sponsorship etc. it's a huge commitment.

We were a fairly 'average' family and my mum parents managed to get me all over the counrty to compete in musical festivals (I'm a classical guitarist). I think you find ways. Lift sharing with other families etc.

This is also one of the many reasons I was so cheesed off with the bloody Olympic Torch relay, all the money that was recklessly and pointlessly squandered spent on that, could have been ploughed into community sport inititives to help and encourage our furture Olympians - including funds to help lower income families with expenses of this very nature.

Sadly nobody asks my opinion on these matters or the world would be a more tolerable place.

Yes, I think you can work these things out a lot of the time, if you are dedicated and prepared to make sacrifices, or very good at persuing every bit of funding you can find.

I feel a bit sad about sport because my mum went out of her way to rubbish DSis and I's efforts (Sister was allowed to audition for Tring and then shown the letter saying she had been rejected for being the wrong body type! She was 11 years old!)

I expect this was because Mum knew she wasn't prepared to make any sacrifices for something she wasn't interested in - tbf, I doubt either of us would have been professional standard at anything, but it would have been good for our health at least, so a little different to not wanting to take your child around the country for drama classes.

Just read on twitter that it cost Michael Jamisons parents £5k for the week in London including getting tickets to see him in the 200 metre final. So based on that if our DS did make it to the Olympics we would be watching at home!

if DS suddenly took up say compeditive swimming or diving, I wouldn't really know where to start, its not on our TV, we're not really into it as a family

If I had been into it it would have been very easy for my parents to support it because my dad was a competitive diver himself.

I don't think its just about money or time, I think its got a lot to do with the parents being in that "scene".

I had a friend at school who was very good at riding, but because her parents didn't ride she and her brother stuggled to be taken seriously on the "scene" and people kept trying to sell their parents dud horses etc as the parents weren't themselves "horsey"

and if DS has the potential to be the best at tennis, we'ld probably never find out because I have never played tennis, there are no rackets at home, he'ld have noone to practice with at home, we wouldn't ever go for a game as a family, I wouldn't know what was going on so couldn't do any training myself etc

A few year back I was watching Wimbledon and on a whim went out and bought 4 rackets and some balls. I was very pleased it didn't cost a lot

Got the smug smile knocked off my face to find all the tennis courts constantly full. Then a concrete table tennis table appeared in the park near the courts, so off I went for the little bats. I also bought a basketball for adjacent court. I was in 'sporty mum' mode that year

I'm a lone parent with no clue... The council should employ a sports coach to wander around offering ad hoc advice/tips etc. Great that the courts etc are all there...I think it would be great to have someone to tell you how to play though.

I was spotted and asked to go and train in Southampton for swimming and diving (this was in the seventies) but taht would have meant going from home to Southampton pre motorway everyday, twice a day and my parents decided not to commit.

That's what it boils down to, whether parents are prepared to invest the time. I knew zero about football, my DH was a rugby man but all 3 of ours chose football after trying tennis, boxing rugby and dance.

Now, I reckon I could given any football commentator a run for their money!

Both my boys are massively into cricket. The play for club, district and county between April and September, 6 days a week. In the winter they spend a fair amount of time indoor training and are at the nets every chance they get.

It cost a fortune in kit and clothing, travel costs around the country are huge and we ( me and dh) spend most of the year communicating by mobile phone from various pitches.

Who knows if they will ever be good enough to play for England,but they think they will be and thats what matters. I have to add that this is totally driven by them, at no point are they ever made to feel that they can't stopnplaying atvany time.

in order for them to be regularly exposed to a sport at a young enough age to get into olympic catagories they have to see people around them doing it don't they?

Like I say DS is unlikely to even TRY tennis until he goes to one of those mixed sport summer schools or something, so already his potential is diminished compaired to a child from a family who go and play anyway