At my school we had the option of sport and other activities every afternoon from 3.30 - 5.30. This meant that both my parents could work full time to (just about) afford the fees.

And yet ironically it seems to me most British motorcycle racers seem to come from working-class, comprehensive-school backgrounds. Most bike racers seem to have a family background in mechanics and rode bikes round fields from a very young age.

I think there are a number of problems with state school sport:

-Playing fields being sold off. Also, computers being given far too much prominence within the school leading to sports halls being converted into computer suites. The private sector doesn't seem to feel the need to offload its assets like that. I was lucky enough to go to a state school with facilities for just about every sport that didn't involve a horse or water, but many schools these days are just down to some tennis courts, a football pitch and one multi-use hall.

-A left-wing teaching union/Labour government hatred of competition that might produce winners and losers.

-A curriculum that's more bothered about getting kids to meet targets to satisfactory levels rather than developing their sports. Most state schools teach fixed sports on cycles, so you effectively just have 'taster sessions' of every sport on repeat. If someone shows promise, they might be encouraged to join an after-school team, but in the private sector if someone shows promise they are coached as part of the PE lesson itself. As a result, talent can be spotted early on and nurtured.

As ever, the state sector is completely hamstrung by the people who run it, who are so blinkeredly left-wing they can't see how their obssession with a narrow set of political ideas coupled with a disastrous target-led culture is ruining the lives of the kids sent through it.

I've said it before, but one of Blair's biggest crimes was against his own country. He inherited an education system that worked perfectly well and proceeded to ruin it. Having trained as a teacher, worked in several schools and decided to throw in the towel having had enough of the system's fatal flaws, I've seem the wreckage, even at the school that I myself attended. And I know full well that if I went through that school now I'd have come out the other side a lot thicker, a lot fatter and with the attention span of a gnat. The values it used to be run on during the Major era, of rigour and taking pride in your work, were positively demonised under Labour.

There are good kids in those schools, but they're marching into the battleground that is the real world with one hand tied behind their backs, up against kids from public schools taught as individuals rather than a statistic to make the local council look good.

There's a grain of a good idea in the new academies. However, the power of the teaching unions needs serious curtailing (lobbying over pay and conditions is fair enough, but they're exerting a hard-left influence over the way kids are educated and have been doing for decades. If you're a teacher and you don't sign up to the union line on politics you're left high and dry), the inspection regime needs reorganising to focus on teaching quality rather than points-scoring, and the league tables IMO need to be reduced to once every four years, with a rolling average taken.

And the exam boards. One for each subject. Annual independent review as to what gets you an A*/A/B/C etc with no fiddling or quibbling. No grades to exist below C- - if you don't get a C-, you fail. It's a total farce that people can say they have 'x-number of GCSEs' when they can 'pass' with something as low as a G.

That's original, never heard that before.

If I could just take up your comment regards working class seems to be where lots of riders have backgrounds. I would agree with that, over all the years spent in the race paddocks here and abroad (my lad races)I have heard little evidence of upper class lads racing. Even sponsors seem to have working backgrounds and made good, but the bike racing fraternity is very close knit. On the BSB grid most riders also have a full time job helping to pay for the racing, so when you see a bike go down and the rider get up I always think jeez another 3k in crash damage. Problem is now that even the lads at top level are struggling to find a sponsored ride, many pay to ride even up to MOTO 2 level! That is shocking IMO, club racers hope to make it into the top level of course, but when the budget for a seasons racing has to be met then its daunting to say the least.

Stupid too.

So would it not make sense to both maximise our nation's chances of success and make the population much healthier (and thus more economically and socially beneficial) to extend the same advantages towards kids who show the same levels of promise, but can't afford to succeed on their own?

Surely this is where the notion of state support really comes into its own?

Also, as an interesting contrast to Hoy, Bradley Wiggins is about as working-class as it's possible to be, and he started out by going down to his local, scruffy outdoor velodrome and riding round setting fast laps on a second-hand racing bike bought from the local exchange and mart.

Background is no indication of talent - or that talent being worth officially supporting - so why do we have a state sector that leaves so many potential Bradley Wigginses to fail in obscurity? Especially if we can get to fourth in the medals table behind only America, China and South Korea?

I find it rather sad that so many 'promising young footballers' end up just that. The focus is so narrow. I bet a lot of generally unacademic kids could be persuaded to pour their efforts into sports other than football and achieve success far more readily and in excess of the rather pathetic doomed Premiership dream so many of them have. There are only twenty Premiership football clubs, each club only has a limited number of players and most of them are foreigners. Even if you're quite good at football, your chances of being a Premiership footballer are extremely slim.

However, if that effort and natural physical ability found in so many unacademic working-class kids could be channelled into other sports, they could achieve sporting prowess and the requisite career far more easily. There's the discipline aspect too - look at the massively positive influence boxing gyms have on so many run-down areas. A good boxing gym can actually cut crime as well as produce champions. Same goes for martial-arts clubs.

Sport and the benefits of sport are massively undervalued in this country, despite our 'superfan' reputation especially regarding football and cricket. We're very good as it is, but the reality is that if we addressed the problems of state-sector sport we could be even better.

Wouldn't necessarily take more money either, just a better use of existing funds and much less bureaucracy.

But how do you do that? Even if we spend a lot of money on talent scouting through the schools, rich people are still going to be able to spend more money on their own one or two children than the state can on millions of children.

Most "promising young footballers" have most of the attributes of a lot of professional footballers - a fascination with celebrity culture, a propensity to spit, and a criminal record for assault - but not the footballing talent. It's just a newspaper cliche.

In my opinion the problem is actually state sector sport. The whole point is that we have to pick winners and losers; that's how sport works. If we spent the money checking to see if every individual was any good there would be no money left to develop them. So what we do is to concentrate on the ones with drive - the ones who like Wiggins wanted it more than anything else - and figure out from them who has the talent, rather than doing it the other way round. I think it's the best way IMO.

^^^^

As the saying goes the fastest, greatest racing driver in the World has likely never driven a car.

Might I suggest there was a flaw somewhere in your research and/or a bias which came through to draw somewhat erroneous conclusions..

A slight exaggeration for which I apologise.
3 men in my sons event. From 7 counties.