Sunday 7 March 2010

The British LTA: Lousy Toff’s Association?



When you think of Lithuania, if ever in fact, what normally comes to mind? The Eurovision song contest? Maybe. Perhaps even the capital city of Vilnius may enter your schema once in a blue moon, even then only as a cheap alternative to Prague for a RyanAir weekend away. For some exceptional sport’s junkies possible connections may be made to a competent national basketball team? But Lithuania and world class tennis players are rarely mentioned in the same sentence together.

However Lithuania have just risen above Great Britain in the world tennis rankings thanks to a comprehensive victory in the Davis Cup (Or AEGON Team GB, as their proud, or now not so proud sponsors like them to be known). Which leads us to ask the question “golly, are Lithuania good at tennis?” The answer is no, just that Britain are really that bad. Failure to win against Turkey in a relegation playoff in July will see the loser drop into Europe/Africa Zone Group III, the lowest tier of the competition.

O for the days of Tiger Tim and Greg Rusedski! Alex Bogdanovic, not exactly a household name, is the second best male in British tennis and is currently cemented at a lowly 151st in the world rankings. The ladies side, despite a recent resurgence, fares little better with just two players inside the top one hundred worldwide players.

A similar state of affairs was evident in Vancouver where the British Olympic team only escaped total embarrassment by collecting one gold medal, the exploits of one Amy Williams we can thank for that. In the British ski team it was more battle of the richest, than the fittest, whereby only those that could afford to fund their own exploits could compete as all financial support was withdrawn to the athletes in the weeks prior to Vancouver.

Skiing in the alp’s, tennis at Wimbledon, cricket at Lord’s.....not exactly a working class man’s ideal day out is it? Britain needs to forget it’s sporting Bourgeois roots once and for all if it is to ever satisfy the worldwide success it craves as the next host of the Olympics. If an Australian was told he wasn’t dressed adequately for a game of lawn tennis, or didn’t have the required levels of elocution his reply would probably mirror “Gee’s piss off mate”, not to stereotype of course, but the point is their success as a sporting nation is based on accessibility to all.

Why pick on tennis? Because it epitomizes the “leave it to the rich kid’s” attitude of British sport.

By Ed Barney

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