The ‘Flipside’ of the Sports ‘Miracle’: Declining Mass Sport Provision

Abstract

The balancing act of supporting recreational, or ‘mass’, and elite sport is a problem faced by the majority of leading sports nations in the world today, in the 21st century. Key policy narratives oscillate on a regular basis between ‘sport for all’ and ‘sport for sport’s sake’. The UK government, for example, is presently in a ‘sport for sport’s sake’ phase, having ditched the notion that sport is a panacea for all ills in society in favour of a focus on developing a ‘world leading sporting nation’1 in the lead-up to the 2012 Olympics. Australia, New Zealand, Canada and post-unification Germany have sports systems which are also characterised ‘by conflicts and dilemmas between elite sport and sport for all’.2 Nonetheless, most leading sporting nations tend to believe in a ‘virtuous cycle’ model of sport,3 including the SED in the formative days of the emerging state, in which elite and mass sport are inextricably bound up with one another. The ‘virtuous cycle’ of sport has a convincing logic of circularity to it: elite success leads to more mass sport participation and a healthier populace; this in turn provides a bigger ‘pool’ of talent from which to choose the elite stars of the future, which in turn ensures elite success. The process then starts over again. We maintain that this understanding of the relationship between mass and elite sport has, in part, been influenced by a misreading and misunderstanding of the GDR sports ‘miracle’ (see Chapter 8 for a more in-depth discussion of this).