What makes a gold medallist: private or state support and schooling?

From Toby Young in The Spectator (he tweeted about it during the opening ceremony), to Peter Wilby on The Guardian website, Alice Perry on Labour List to the Chair of the BOA, there is a lot of hand wringing about privately educated athletes being over-represented in Team GB. Even Rupert Murdoch tweeted about it.
Four of the eleven of Team GB who have thus far won gold in 2012 went to private schools.  The most interesting point here is that two of them went to Millfield. A remarkable achievement indeed.  But does this mean that if I sent my children to St Bogg's down the road, paying £5,000 a term for the privilege, they would have a better chance of being elite athletes than if they attended the mixed inclusive state comprehensive where I teach or Toby Young's state free school? Of course not.
Millfield specialises in the selection and support of elite athletes in a vast range of disciplines. Full scholarships are provided as the school recognises that sporting potential cuts across income brackets.
Should the state system be doing this more effectively? Yes, undoubtedly. Millions poured in to free schools would have been much better spent, one could argue, on establishing academies for elite athletes. Or on re-building existing schools' sports facilities. Please remember, hand-wringers, that the coalition removed all the money from Labour's schools building programme.
Maybe we need a national school sports programme, encouraging youngsters to participate in an increasing range of competitive sports against other schools? Well here is some very exciting news for you bitter state educated journalists/politicians who went to Thatcher's schools, at a time when teachers' strikes meant no after school clubs. The Labour government ran a national programme for sport, established sports specialist schools, and built loads of sports halls and MUGAs (that's multi use games areas). These facilities are SHARED with the local community. Hooray, so my students can do sport for hours at school every day and then come back in the evening for extra training, clubs, classes, competitions. This is in stark contrast to the high profile independent school that my garden backs on to, whose extensive playing fields, tennis courts and boat house are deserted every evening. I have investigated using the pool or badminton courts as a local resident - not a hope.
So where do my children do their sport? At their state primary school they do a lot, including gymnastics, handball, football, judo, swimming, skittleball. The LA runs a range of competitions between schools and events for the best swimmers, athletes, footballers.
But more importantly we are parents of sporty kids who happen to love football so we spend most weekends trekking to football training and matches. The club is run by volunteers, mostly parents but also others who love football. It is affordable. Thanks to Chelsea's involvement my son spent a year training on Fridays at one of their many elite training centres, all for free. But someone had to get to get him to training and back.
And this seems to be the pattern for our medallists. Far more important than which school they went to, they all had parents who inspired or supported them though the hours of training and the setbacks. See what I mean?
Peter Wilson, our shooting champion and one of the Millfield golds was an extremely good athlete. After a snowboarding accident his father suggested he take up shooting and the rest is history. Though that glosses over the thousands of pounds invested by his parents in his training, and the Dubai angel and former shooting medallist who has supported him with both finance and training.
Opportunity is also key. Helen Glover did NOT row at Millfield.  All that expensive education did not put her on a one way track to Olympic gold - she would never have become an elite athlete without Sir Steve Redgrave's Sporting Giants project.  Also there was British Cycling's visit to Lizzie Armitstead's non-selective state school, and British Rowing's talent scheme, and other schemes which have led to additional medals. Why should the premiership football clubs snap up and spew out the best young athletes? More extensive outreach is needed from sports associations to get the most out of our entire population, not just that 7% who have the money.
China is outstripping us all in the medals tables and they almost all studied at state schools. The state invested massively in a talent spotting programme, travelling in to the mountains to find youngsters with the right physique for different sports and then taking them thousands of miles from their families to train them intensively.
Glasgow School of Sport, which counts Michael Jamieson among its alumnae shows us that state schools can make a difference if they select elite athletes. The best athlete from my son's primary school is starting at Queen's specialist sports college Watford in September, selected for his sporting prowess.
Will any of my children make it as elite athletes? Not necessarily. But as a volunteer at a community sports club, with them regularly involved in competitive sport I know that some of their friends will.
And my students at our fantastic inclusive state secondary school? Like my colleagues I cheer on our teams, tell students about sporting opportunities locally,encourage them to try something new, challenge them to win. One of our teachers is involved in British gymnastics, and she has provided excellent opportunities for our prize winning students. Another teacher was a basketball player and his team has won the borough tournament three years running. A former student and we hope future Olympian has run 100m faster aged 18 than Usain Bolt did at that age. State schools give everyone opportunity to excel. But after they leave school it is expensive to pursue an Olympic dream - coalition cuts can't have helped. We ARE doing our bit in state schools, but if my students' parents cannot afford the thousands of pounds it cost Peter Wilson's parents to fund his sporting ambition after UK Sport funding was cut in 2008, no wonder they have less chance of a medal in later life.
What are you doing to inspire a generation? Whatever school young people attend, surely they have all been inspired to greatness by Bradley Wiggins ringing the bell for London 2012. Peace! Leave wringing of your hands.

Why did we need and deserve the Olympics?

My father was phobic about sport. 13 stone aged 13, he genuinely saw sport as a form of torture at school. I only fully understood this during the "Sport for all" campaign during the 1970s, when I saw his violent reaction to the stickers that were everywhere.
So my house was a sport free zone, apart from a glorious few weeks every four years when my mother rebelled and had the Olympics on the telly.  This made such a huge impression on me that aged six when my teacher asked me to draw me doing the job I wanted in my future, I drew myself swimming and on a podium collecting a gold medal.
"What is that?" asked my teacher in disgust.
"I want to be an Olympic swimmer when I grow up."
"That's not a job," she said scornfully.  "What do you want to do as a job?"
"I don't know," I replied.  "All I want to do is be a swimmer."
"Look at what the other girls are drawing and choose one of those things," was her uninspired advice.
A biddable child, I looked at pictures of hairdressers, nurses and air hostesses drawn by my friends. There was even a traffic warden. I think that after a brief existentialist crisis, I went for police woman - it seemed marginally more adventurous.
Roll forward almost twenty years, and though I have not made it as a swimmer,  I am still crazy about the Olympics.  Manchester has bid to host the 2000 games, but it seems a foregone conclusion that Beijing will win the bid.  I am working in Hong Kong, and excitement is intense. The whole of Tiananmen Square, and even large parts of the rest of the country from Tibet to Hong Kong, are set to explode in fireworks when the bid is announced.  I watch Tiananmen Square and the People's Congress on TV as the announcement is made.  "Beijing" says the announcer and people are hugging each other and crying wih happiness, but that was just the intro, announcing all the bidders in alphabetical order.  Sydney won it.  It was as if the shining light of the Olympic torch had been extinguished all across China.  The Hong Kong papers the next day really struggled to make the best of it.  Then I saw a piece on BBC World showing the reaction in Manchester.  A crowd of thousands singing "Always look on the bright side of life," led by Mr Blobby.  It was then that I first thought that a UK Olympics would be quite special.
Roll forward to July 5th 2005 and I am on the tube back from Wimbledon,surrounded by sodden tennis fans. We have sat all afternoon in the rain on Centre Court(pre roof). But in that time the clouds cleared for 40 minutes and we saw a whole women's semi-final. Sharapova won. Seven hours in the rain,forty minutes of tennis. "We were so lucky," beamed a woman,and the entire carriage nodded in agreement - such a great match.
In a rush of solidarity with the patient fans around me who didn't expect much, but were so positive and just so ... nice ...
I thought- "We DESERVE the Olympics! We will be the best hosts ever."
And I still cannot watch that announcement on July 6th 2005 without crying. It was so unexpected,Paris were the favourites, but the team worked really hard to prove we deserved it to, "Inspire a generation."