Delete the elite

Wayne Goldsmith was the Australian physiologist who in 1992 was tasked to identify talented athletes and pull them into high performance programmes to prepare them for the Sydney Olympics in 2000. In a fascinating podcast, he shared his very important conclusion that we also must grasp even now.

He declared strongly that “There is no such thing as an Elite eight-year-old, a high performance ten-year-old or a professional eleven-year-old.” In fact, he underlined his point several times by adding, “It doesn’t happen! It just doesn’t happen! We must get it out of our vocabulary”.

One of the reasons that he states his strong assertion is that we cannot tell what sport an eight-year-old is going to play later on; he states that “this year’s basketball player may be next year’s footballer and the next year’s butterfly swimmer, the following year’s whatever”.

We do not know. Indeed, we must add here that that is exactly what it should be like – we should not tell a child what sport they should stick to at an early age.

 They should be free to try all sports and not specialise in one sport too early – after all, we do not have children specialising in academic subjects until they are much older (they only cut it down to three subjects, not even down to one, around the age of sixteen!) so why should it be any different in sport?

Another important point he makes is that measuring physical talent at the age of eleven is a poor indication of their long-term success. We cannot place one eleven-year-old child alongside another eleven-year-old as they may well have developed faster than others; years later the weaker eleven-year-old may be much stronger than the other one. Comparing them is raising undue, even unrealistic, hopes for one child and draining the other of enjoyment and hope.

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We must remove the very idea of an Elite child sportsman from our vocabulary. Of course, the very word ‘Elite’ has poor connotations in most cases; it is seen to be symbolic of superiority. There is real danger in that as John C. Maxwell points out: “There are two kinds of pride, both good and bad. 'Good pride' represents our dignity and self-respect. 'Bad pride' is the deadly sin of superiority that reeks of conceit and arrogance.”

Goldsmith in fact affirms that if we continue with such a mindset of elitism, to push children in sport from a young age, we are actually placing them on a “road to doom” – and all the while, we think they are travelling along on the road to success! How so? The answer may be found in the very word “delete” – a final, brutal, critical, doom-proclaiming ending. We do not consider lightly pressing the ‘delete’ button on our laptops. Fortunately, sometimes the computer shares a similar view to us when it asks: “Are you sure you wish to delete?” Are we sure we want to lead our children to doom? The elite often become the effete. Delete the elite.

What we should be deleting is the very notion of elitism, especially in children’s sport. The children who do well in a sport (someone has to come first) at a young age are no more important or special than the others.

Indeed, we could no doubt find endless examples of current top-class sportsmen and women who at school were beaten by other children but who now no longer play the sport, let alone compete at a high level. The very simple fact is that hundreds of children in a school cycle will play for national age group teams and never play for a national team – and “so what?” if they do play at national level at age group level? How does that make them elite?

If we delete the elite, the few, we will delight in them all, and that is much more important; instead of the elite, we must focus rather on the ‘elate’ – we want all children, not just the early talented ones, to enjoy sport and so continue with it, at whatever level they reach later in life.

Someone once said that “Only a Goldsmith Knows the Value of Gold”! Wayne Goldsmith knows the value of gold, for sure; he knows the value of a gold medal and how to achieve it. However, he also knows that just as gold needs to be refined, so does a sportsperson and that takes time.

 Delete the elite in schools! Instead of focussing on the children’s sporting talent, we should be, in the words of Goldsmith, “building their character, values, virtues, integrity, respect, discipline” – remember the All Black mantra – “a better person makes a better player”?

That includes eight-year-old children.