We’ve got the wrong attitude to sport

I thought the legacy of the Olympic and Commonwealth Games was to encourage the masses to take up sport and become healthy rather than simply maintain pressure on government to keep up funding for so-called “elite athletes” which I think is the main concern of the Scottish Sports Alliance.

There’s a Catch 22 here. The more elite sports people we have out there the more we watch sport on TV and the physical health of the other 99.9 per cent of us deteriorates even further.

With an average of nearly 100 hours per week staring at all sizes of screen (increasing when major sports are on) combined with ridiculous levels of obesity at all ages there is not the slightest chance of improving the health of this nation.

Most of the past 30 years I have been a member of Fife Athletic Club, which I joined aged 40. I have run nearly 500 races and have seen a large decline in participation and numbers over that time plus a drop in performance winning times.

Why? Because there is no commitment. Young people in the main simply flit from one activity to the next. After they’ve done one London Marathon they tick that box and go on to their next experience.

I play golf five times a week at Kinghorn Golf Club, a really good golf course with superb greens and wonderful views; it has not had any junior members at all for years.

It is only £5 to £29 per annum depending on age, so surely the price cannot put young people off playing.

Despite the fact that we are constantly told how young people are achieving great success all the time they are certainly not doing it at Kinghorn.

Watching the Walker Cup does not do anything for junior golf, where the sad fact is that because the game is difficult to learn and requires real commitment the vast majority of young people are just turned off before they have given it a chance.

However, if by some miracle Rory McIlroy was to become our golf professional (we have no professional) one can guarantee that hundreds would be queueing up to join.

A sad world we live in.

Alan Meiklejohn

West Albert Road

Kirkcaldy