Sally Gunnell Getting Kids Back Into Sport

8 months ago 10th Jun 10:45

Sally Gunnell is one of the best athletes ever produced by this country, going on to win Olympic gold in Barcelona for the 400 metre hurdles in 1992.

This proved to be the catalyst for her career as she went on to win world, European and Commonwealth titles over the following years.

Now retired Sally is working to help get kids into sport I caught up with her to talk about her new scheme, her career and the state of British athletics

- You are launching a new scheme Aviva UKA Academy so can you tell me a little bit about it?

It’s really about trying to get kids active, to get kids healthy and to realise that athletics is a great way of doing that. And I think that what people don’t realise about athletics is that there are so many disciplines within it, it’s not all about speed or things like that, so if someone is very strong then there’s the shot or javelin and if you have got natural speed then there’s the long jump.

If you visit the website uka.org.uk and just find ways of getting your kids into athletics and that might be through a club or finding ideas for your school or some of the grass roots come and try days in your area.

But I believe that kids should try all different sports and sometimes with athletics you have got to give the parents information and I get asked a lot what should I do? And it’s about getting into a club near you.

- Why did you choose to get involved in the scheme?

I have three young kids now who are just getting into athletics really and it is quite difficult to get into, I was encouraged by school and there are not so much clubs within schools and that sort of thing, so a lot of people are not getting involved because they don’t know quite how to.

I think with the Academy and doing all these sorts of things I really felt that we were offering something else for kids to get into and get them active really.

- And what do you hope it will achieve?

Ultimately I would like to see, I don’t know whether you have seen the figures but kids a re only doing two hours of sport a week compared with 45 hours watching telly and I think that that is such a major health problem later on in life, it’s really about trying to get our kids fit and active from a young age.

And often that is through parents giving them their support, I know that my boys would never go down to an athletics club or a football club off their own back, so it’s really your role as a parent to get them active and give them your support.

- There’s a disturbing fact that by 2050 90% of children will be overweight so what needs to be done to get them more active and to stop this prediction coming truth?

I think all kids are going to be on computers, I can’t see how I’m ever going to get mine off, and at the end of the of the day you have got to be able to go upstairs and ‘right you have been on here an hour lets go’ and offer alternatives.

And yes they are going to moan mine oldest is always complaining about not wanting to go to athletics but once he’s down there he loves it and I think that is where parents support comes in, I know that we all lead busy lives and we are all knackered and it’s to just come in and shove the telly on but you are creating a load of problems later on were your kids are very unfit and unhealthy.