Who Needs Sport?


Who Needs Sport?

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Sport is transformative.

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Sport gives us, really, an opportunity, what I feel,

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is to dare greatly.

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I think the more we can do to show how it can benefit you mentally,

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physically, emotionally...

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I mean, for me, it's sport that keeps me healthy and sane

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in lots of different ways.

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The feeling-good factor is very important.

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If you feel good about yourself, then, obviously,

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there's a bit more of a strut to your step,

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and that can aid to positive thinking

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which is perhaps the most important part of winning at the highest level.

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The risk of being physically inactive,

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in terms of risk of heart disease,

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is about the same as the risk of smoking.

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I think exercise is absolutely fundamental for our health

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and our wellbeing in general,

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because if you think about our background, you know,

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when we were hunters and gatherers,

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exercise was absolutely essential part of our life,

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whereas now a lot of us sit in the office, pretty much all day,

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with minimal exercise.

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People that sit down a lot seem to be getting more heart disease,

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more diabetes.

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They seem to have greater obesity, so they're a bit fatter,

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and the interesting thing is

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this doesn't seem to be completely offset by being physically active.

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So you go to the gym and you do your half-hour of activity

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in the evening and that gives you a clear benefit.

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It appears that sitting down a lot is bad, even if you do that.

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Our bodies are built of different systems, if you like.

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So the basic frame that we have is our bones, joints, muscles.

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They're all designed to move.

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Essentially, if we don't move, a lot of that system can seize,

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it can be badly conditioned so that when we do move,

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we maybe injure ourselves.

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And then the second big system we have is our heart and lungs.

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That really is the engine.

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We have to keep exercising that muscle

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because that's what pumps blood around our body.

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It brings oxygen into our system, which is just vital.

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It's vital for our brain function,

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it helps our muscles to operate effectively.

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What happens is they have to oxidise fuels,

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and the fuels are carbohydrates,

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which are stored in the muscle in the form of glycogen,

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and they're transporting the blood in the form of glucose.

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And fats, and you've got some fats stored in your muscle.

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You've also got fat which is transported in the circulation.

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It's liberated from your fat tissue.

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They need to oxidise these fuels and they need to do that with oxygen.

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The oxygen is carried in the blood.

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So your heart rate beats faster and that supplies more oxygen

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to the muscles to enable you to do the work.

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And the third sort of set of things that are going on are

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largely chemical and some of that's hormonal.

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So the way our hormones are balanced in our body is also

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affected by how active we are.

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You get quite a significant release of endorphins that

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bring about a feeling of wellbeing.

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It's during, beyond a certain length of exercise,

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and then beyond the exercise.

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So you get that real sort of nice warmth, relaxation, feel good.

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Any form of physical activity, whether it's walking the dog

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or swimming just with your friends once a week or twice a week,

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all of that helps keep yourself healthy.

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I think dancing gives you a lot of joy.

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Remember dancing involves music so it is rhythm, it is tune

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but a little dancing also is a social activity.

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A range of sports, not just team sports,

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although teams sports remain very important for a lot of young people,

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are increasingly looking at health and fitness type, lifestyle, exercise

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for young people and, increasingly, you see that in schools.

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They're equipped with gyms, not just gym halls.

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So there's been quite a lot of things that have really caused us

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to reflect on a serious problem and how to solve it

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and part of that's been, importantly,

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talking to, and involving, young people in some of the solutions.

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In order to get to the top level of either sport or dance,

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you have to change your lifestyle. This is not just a set of exercises.

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You do the training consistently throughout many, many years

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and this affects how you interact with your friends.

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A lot of athletes are unable to go out with their mates.

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Sometimes even birthday celebrations are very downbeat occasions because of the training.

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I think I've had three epidurals.

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Which is the funniest thing in the world to have, as a man,

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because your legs are drunk and you're all right up top, aren't you?

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So they let me out and I tried to run to my car

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and my legs were like that, all over the place.

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You didn't play?

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Yeah, I had the epidural on a Monday and I played on Tuesday.

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At times, I had my knee drained of fluid on a Friday,

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just before the game, so I could play on the Saturday.

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Maybe I'll limp a little bit when I get older, a lot of people do.

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But I think everybody's proud of trying

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to help their team-mates in that way.

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This is a guy who was fighting for his life.

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He had a 4% chance of survival when he was diagnosed with cancer.

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He was a good cyclist beforehand but when he was able to come back

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and started competing, he became a great cyclist.

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He admits himself the cancer actually

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focused his mind a lot more.

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You never want to hope for an injury

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but I also think it made me stronger mentally

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because so many people started putting me down

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and saying I wouldn't even make the Olympic team

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because I was too old, I was over my prime.

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I'm just 18 years old. But it made me want it that much more

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and I guess I like to prove people wrong, so that's kind of what I did.

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But it wasn't even for those people, it was for me.

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I wanted to prove to myself that, even after a serious injury,

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I was able to come back, and not just come back,

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but come back stronger and be on top of the world.

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It actually takes mental ability to do exercise,

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so you're actually triggering nerve cells,

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you're triggering responses,

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you're making decisions while you're being active,

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and the more complex the skill or sport that you're involved in,

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the more that nervous system is triggered and involved.

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There is some evidence that exercise actually helps

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develop new neurons in your brain.

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They can see that from studies where

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they do magnetic resonance imaging of the brain.

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So exercise actually might make you a little bit smarter.

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You respond, adapt, you change the way your mind processes things.

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It becomes faster at doing those things.

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So you actually are training the mind in quite a skilful way

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and stimulating those new cells that way.

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I don't know a boxer that I've ever seen that,

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before the bell for the first round, he thinks he's going to lose.

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Now what creates that mentality?

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It's a belief in yourself.

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And that mentality's not something that you find in a textbook.

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It's something, sometimes, you find on the street. Not in the classroom.

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Sometimes you find it in your living room.

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Sometimes you find it in your church.

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There are different ways, but it does mean the same thing.

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You believe you're invincible.

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After, it sort of clicked and then that was it,

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I was strong in the head.

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I knew I was going to win before I started.

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And it's a brilliant feeling to have.

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Through my own experience, I'm not sure you have to be this completely

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self-assured, certain person that you're going to be a champion.

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I just think that you have to try hard and keep trying,

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and when you get into a negative state,

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do everything you can to get out of it

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and stay focused on doing the best you can,

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training well and, hopefully, good things will come of that.

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Sports psychology is effectively part of sports science that takes

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care of people's thoughts, people's emotions and people's behaviour.

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One of the things we'd focused on is that

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competition really shouldn't be different to training,

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and not to let the moment overwhelm you.

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So the goal was, in the start gate at the Olympic Games,

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to turn my head off and let all the work

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and all the quality training I'd done

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come into play and just let it happen.

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Being on the start line of the race in the Olympics,

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so many people have helped me get where I've got to, so many things...

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So many people and so many resources have helped me on this journey.

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So I feel the pressure now, even eight months ahead of the race,

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that I have to pull it off on the day.

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It really has to happen.

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So I think sports psychology, to help you deal with that anxiety,

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and still perform to the best that you can, is crucial.

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One of the most essential sports psychology tool that I use is

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the potential of the athletes and, indeed, dancers I work with.

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I think that a lot of them perform at the highest level.

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A lot of them had very, very successful,

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either competitions or performances.

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And it is important for them to be aware that,

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when they're facing a very tough competition,

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to remember "I've done it before and it worked really well before.

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"I managed to turn the corner and I can do it again."

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One of the areas that's been largely kind of taboo in sport has been

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around mental health, rather than physical disability or whatever.

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Mental health is, I think, a very kind of tricky area for sport

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because within sport, there is a very high end of psychology,

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the will to win, the desire to focus, all of those things

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that are mental skills as much as they're physical skills.

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That's probably been the reason why people have been beaten

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in certain situations or have not been able to cope with

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a career in sport or in business.

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It's something now that is a bit more in the public domain.

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People are a bit more comfortable about coming out and talking to it.

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If you look back, I suppose, 50 years ago,

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homosexuality was not discussed in public and now is open and why not?

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If you're a high-performing athlete,

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there's a kind of euphoria around what you're doing.

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You're highly concentrated, you often lock yourself away.

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You often kind of lock out contact with wider social groups.

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You stop drinking, you maybe stop socialising.

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So, in lots of ways,

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that has to have an impact on your wellbeing as an individual.

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It's not uncommon, therefore, as a consequence of that,

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for high-performing athletes or, indeed, for middle-ranking athletes

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to begin to take on some of those everyday mental health challenges -

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depression, sense of loneliness, sense of isolation,

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sense of actually not feeling strong inside yourself,

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but having to be physically strong,

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whilst inside you might actually be breaking up.

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It's something that, you know, I probably went through

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when I moved over from Australia to Leicester in 2001

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and I was severely homesick and just couldn't get out of bed at all.

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I just didn't even want to sort of face the world.

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A lot of it maybe comes from if you're putting too much pressure on yourself,

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and then it's not quite happening the way that you thought it would

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and, you know, you start thinking, "Well, is this it?"

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You know, when you've got family and stuff like that...

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You know, if you've got a normal job and you come home,

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you kind of get them things that feed your soul.

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But when you're sitting in a hotel room

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and you don't get to see much of them anyway,

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that can play on your mind and it was on mine.

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We're all different, some people can handle it better than others,

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but I've realised that that's something that's not going to make me happy and content,

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so it's just finding that balance and kind of getting a schedule

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and managing my time right, and getting a bit of everything

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and, as long as that means you're happy doing what you're doing then that would equal success in my eyes.

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Physical activity is one of the few things that has

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a huge amount of evidence to support it being

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a very effective intervention to improve mental health.

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And it doesn't need to be sport.

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Any kind of physical activity is seen to be good for mental health.

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The Olympics is a fabulous thing to bring, the only time, probably,

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in our lifetime we'll see it in London, or in England.

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Unfortunately for us, the Olympics has coincided with

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a period of huge recessionary problems for the country - lack of money, lack of investment -

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and the Government's hands, I suppose, are tied

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because this is a time, on the back of the Olympics,

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what we should be doing is pumping millions of pounds

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into school sports, grassroots sports, to encourage, to build.

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We can't just suddenly think,

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"I watched the 5,000 metres on TV

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"and I'm going to be a 5,000 metre runner."

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There has to be a structure.

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People I can think of, it's really encouraged them

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to take an interest in sport.

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People have booked tickets to go and see things

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that they would never, ever normally go and see

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and I hope that that would have a positive effect in perhaps

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encouraging people to try something themselves,

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become a bit more active themselves,

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bring a lot more role models to the forefront in the country

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that will hopefully encourage and inspire young people

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and people across the generations to try things.

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What we do know is that, in the past,

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there's not much evidence to suggest that that actually happens.

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In Manchester, for example,

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less people were doing physical activity there after the event

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than there were before, and inequalities,

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that is the difference between the rich and poor within Manchester,

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had widened after the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

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It's an enormous responsibility, running these major events, and,

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therefore, requires a degree of what I would say legacy-consciousness.

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What I mean by that is really thinking about how

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everything that we do as a major event organiser,

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how can we impact on the future prosperity

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of the communities that we're working in?

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And how can we make things, essentially, better?

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A large amount of money, over £9 billion,

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has been spent on providing new sports stadia,

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providing other kinds of infrastructure

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in the East End of London and I'm sure much of that is to be welcomed.

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What's less clear, though,

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is what is good for the actual population of the East End of London.

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Not much of that money is actually spent on the kinds of facilities

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that would be of use to local people.

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A large number of the facilities are really aimed at elite athletes

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rather than participation in sport,

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or just participation in physical activity.

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Those venues that we are building are,

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and the infrastructure projects, are communally relevant,

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communally active and are open to the public

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and the general neighbourhoods that they're being built in,

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well before the Games actually start.

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So the legacy really is starting before the Games. It's started now.

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There is a trend whereby big sports events like this

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get held in brownfield sites.

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That's sites that were, perhaps, in the past used for industry

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and they were left behind and are lying derelict now.

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These sports events are used

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almost as a regeneration tool for these areas.

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The question, really, has to be, what could have been done with the money

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spent on the Olympics if that was to be diverted to regeneration schemes?

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Challenging ourselves for local community benefit is

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absolutely something that is in our ethos,

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and already, to this day, 83% of the contracts that have been

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awarded to Games-related business have been from the local community.

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So that's already having an impact.

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There's a lot of things do help us to develop sport economically,

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things like the Mountain Bike World Cup - huge event,

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large numbers of people travel to Fort William to see that.

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They spend money in shops around the area, buying food, drink,

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you know, just gifts.

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They also stay over in bed and breakfast accommodation, hotels etc.

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They buy their petrol in the area.

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So those major sporting events can be a really big,

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important part of our economy.

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I think, with something like the Paralympics,

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you have to look beyond the purely economic because,

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what, in lots of ways, you're dealing with

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is issues of portrayal as well.

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You're looking to actually challenge orthodox images of how

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disabled talent is actually treated in the UK and you're looking, also,

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to put on, in this case,

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on a world stage people of amazing calibre as performers and athletes.

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Obviously the Blade Runner, Oscar Pistorius,

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who'll be running in the Olympics probably,

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and definitely in the Paralympics,

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you're looking there at something that's world-class,

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of immense quality, and, therefore,

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to see that as being second best is actually something of the past.

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I think the Paralympics will be a huge success.

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There is some evidence to suggest that being a host country

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makes it more likely that you'll win medals.

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I'm quite patriotic and, yeah, if you ask most riders,

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from a patriotic country, the likes of England, Australia and the US,

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it is a big thing, especially being in London.

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I'm massively excited about it.

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It's on a great course and we should have a great team there.

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And, obviously, it's the first medal on offer at the Olympics

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so I'm quite excited

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to try and get Great Britain's account opened with a gold medal.

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We did what's called a health impact assessment in Glasgow

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when we went and asked the communities around the city

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what kind of aspirations they had for their own city from the event.

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The biggest thing that people wanted to see and the biggest thing they

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wanted to derive from the event was a sense of pride in the city.

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They wanted to be proud of a city that had once been proud

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because of its industrial heritage,

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but had seen the city decline for a number of reasons.

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And that's what people are crying out for.

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It was interesting last year at a big World Cup race.

0:22:310:22:34

I had an energy gel just before the start of the race.

0:22:340:22:37

It was really gooey and sticky and left a horrible taste in your mouth.

0:22:370:22:41

I had no water on my bike and there was a bottle of water

0:22:410:22:44

at the side of the road with someone stood next to it.

0:22:440:22:46

I asked for a swig of the water,

0:22:460:22:48

had the water, did my race and, after, somebody said,

0:22:480:22:50

"I saw what you did at the start of the race there.

0:22:500:22:53

"You should never, ever, ever do that.

0:22:530:22:55

"You don't know what could be in that water."

0:22:550:22:57

Some sports, you know,

0:22:570:22:58

will forever be scarred with the effects of ethical issues,

0:22:580:23:04

such as doping and it takes, sometimes,

0:23:040:23:06

a lifetime to change perceptions.

0:23:060:23:08

Cycling's at the forefront of anti-doping, you know.

0:23:080:23:12

There's more tests in this sport than any other sport.

0:23:120:23:14

With more tests, you catch more people.

0:23:140:23:16

There's cheats in every aspect of sport, every aspect of life,

0:23:160:23:19

and if you put the time, money and effort

0:23:190:23:21

into catching cheats, you'll catch them.

0:23:210:23:23

Cycling does that so, technically,

0:23:230:23:25

you could say cycling's the cleanest sport.

0:23:250:23:28

What gets me more frustrated is the ignorant, close-minded

0:23:280:23:31

view of that, you know.

0:23:310:23:33

"Oh, cycling? They're all cheats."

0:23:330:23:35

Well...

0:23:350:23:37

we're not.

0:23:370:23:38

The worst thing now for athletics is every time we see someone run

0:23:380:23:41

a tenth of a second faster,

0:23:410:23:43

the first thought in your mind is, "What's he on?"

0:23:430:23:45

It's quite an interesting topic in para-sport, as it gets called,

0:23:450:23:49

because if you have to take a drug for medical or therapeutic reasons,

0:23:490:23:52

you get what's called a therapeutic use exemption form.

0:23:520:23:56

So there's people that I race against who are on

0:23:560:24:00

very significant amounts of morphine, painkillers,

0:24:000:24:03

all sorts of drugs, some which are very much stimulants,

0:24:030:24:07

which they're allowed to be on for medical reasons.

0:24:070:24:11

And you have to question how beneficial that might also be,

0:24:110:24:14

that they can push through pain barriers

0:24:140:24:16

that other people can't push through.

0:24:160:24:18

How might it be affecting their performance?

0:24:180:24:20

Because it affects the fundamental integrity of the sport,

0:24:200:24:23

I think the warning signs have to be, and the penalties have to be,

0:24:230:24:27

so draconian, that it forgoes the idea of

0:24:270:24:31

"he's paid his price" because

0:24:310:24:33

the damage has not been paid for.

0:24:330:24:36

So, therefore, zero tolerance.

0:24:360:24:38

Life ban.

0:24:380:24:39

I played at teams where they've spat at me.

0:24:500:24:52

Gone to get the ball out of the crowd and they spat in your face.

0:24:520:24:56

I think we're all responsible for each other's actions,

0:24:560:25:00

be it as a fan in an audience or be it on the football pitch.

0:25:000:25:04

We have to expect that whatever we do also passes on to others.

0:25:040:25:09

I think it doesn't matter what environment that's in,

0:25:090:25:14

it becomes a collective and so, you know,

0:25:140:25:18

if we're responsible out in the streets and we pick up litter,

0:25:180:25:21

other people respect the environment and so it passes on.

0:25:210:25:25

So I think you can be held up as a role model as a footballer,

0:25:250:25:30

but who's the role model for the crowd?

0:25:300:25:32

I was at a game quite recently between the team I support,

0:25:320:25:35

St Johnstone, and another Premier League team, Kilmarnock.

0:25:350:25:38

Now, Kilmarnock have a player, Dean Shiels,

0:25:380:25:40

who's actually got one eye. He had an eye accident as a child.

0:25:400:25:43

And a small group of St Johnstone fans were chanting,

0:25:430:25:47

actually quite crassly, about this guy having one eye.

0:25:470:25:50

Other St Johnstone fans turned on them and started to tell them

0:25:500:25:53

to shut up and stop disgracing the club and that.

0:25:530:25:55

I think people are getting more and more...

0:25:550:25:58

that there's a duty for you not to just humiliate somebody

0:25:580:26:00

cos he happens to play in a different football team.

0:26:000:26:03

There's always been this sense of,

0:26:140:26:16

almost like a kind of apartheid culture where women's sport

0:26:160:26:19

was seen as disproportionately less good than male sport.

0:26:190:26:22

But I think that when you see a competition at the highest end,

0:26:220:26:25

if you look at something like the women's 4x100 metres or

0:26:250:26:29

the Jamaican sprint teams, or the women's tour in tennis,

0:26:290:26:33

you're talking about things of a really, really high standard.

0:26:330:26:36

I think the idea that there will always be this disjuncture between

0:26:360:26:40

"men are good and women less good" is actually beginning to disappear.

0:26:400:26:44

I think in the United Kingdom there certainly isn't the same

0:26:500:26:54

tradition of covering all female sports.

0:26:540:26:58

And I do think this is something that is territory-specific.

0:26:580:27:01

If you go to other countries in the world, you will see massive interest

0:27:010:27:06

in women's events, whether that's football, rugby, netball.

0:27:060:27:11

What we invest in covering any sport has to bear

0:27:110:27:15

some relationship to the audience that's going to turn up for that.

0:27:150:27:20

Women-only sport, when it's played out on the television in the UK,

0:27:200:27:24

is not something that tends to drive big numbers of viewers.

0:27:240:27:30

Coverage of sporting events is very expensive by and large,

0:27:300:27:34

and the audience expect a sophisticated level of coverage,

0:27:340:27:39

so it's difficult just to suddenly decide to

0:27:390:27:42

use two cameras in place of 12 or 14.

0:27:420:27:45

It will look like a shoddy and inferior product if you do that,

0:27:450:27:48

and it would do a disservice to whatever sport you're covering.

0:27:480:27:52

The one area where it's fundamentally disappearing

0:27:580:28:00

is in American collegiate sport where, if you looked at soccer,

0:28:000:28:04

which is perhaps more of a sport for women in America,

0:28:040:28:07

this is something that, at college level, is phenomenally successful.

0:28:070:28:11

Corporate sponsors are into it,

0:28:110:28:14

the branded sportswear companies are aware of it.

0:28:140:28:16

So, therefore, simply more value is being poured into it

0:28:160:28:19

and, as more value's poured into it, then standards rise.

0:28:190:28:22

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