With only days until the Olympic Games opening ceremony, UK Sport have announced that they are targeting a record medal haul for Team GB.

The athletes will be part of the “most sophisticated high-performance system in the world, bar none”

and for the second games in a row there will be significantly more women than men competing for Team GB. All sounds great!

Personally, I can’t wait for the Games and the opportunity to binge on Olympic viewing. It’s that once every 4 years’ time when we suddenly get excited about rowing, cycling and a whole host of other sports that are largely forgotten between Games.

At ParkPlay we’ve got loads of other connections:

• Our newest team member Millie is now in Paris for 6 weeks as a volunteer
• Jo Jennings, one of our trustees, competed at 2 Olympics, in Seoul ‘88 and Barcelona ‘92
• We’ve just worked with Natwest on a mini-Olympics for their customers and Decathlon, our equipment partner, are an Official Partner of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games
• I personally have worked closely with Team GB in the past on the follow up to their extremely popular I Am Team GB campaign
• We have taken 12 Olympic and Paralympic sports and turned them into inclusive, non-competitive and easy to access ParkPlay games that everyone of all ages and all abilities can play together

So why are we still feeling a bit conflicted at ParkPlay? Why are we feeling nervous about the Games and any association with them?

Sadly in the past the massive opportunity afforded by the Games – the huge investment and attention generated by weeks of wall-to-wall sport – has been squandered. London 2012 promised to “inspire a generation” but 12 years we’re still as inactive as we were and health inequalities have become more entrenched. Despite the Games costing £8.77 billion the Olympic Park in the heart of London’s most deprived boroughs is

“a lovely place for those who can afford it, with people living in desperate poverty right outside it”.

Long reports have been written on the legacy of the Games but put simply any inspiration effect was negligible and short-lived. There is no sign of Paris 2024 being any different. As a nation most of us will probably enjoy the summer of sport on our tellies, but it will have no discernible impact on our behaviour. And why should it? Unless you’re already active seeing Keely Hodgkinson on the track, Adam Peaty in the pool or Molly Thompson-Smith on the climbing wall, isn’t going to make much of a dent in the numerous and considerable barriers to enjoying playing sport.

Inspiration must be the most over-used and misunderstood word in sport. I personally will undoubtedly be inspired to try and improve my 5k PB or perhaps even get on my bike or give a new sport a go, but I am one of the lucky ones. I have had decades of playing sport, an upbringing that embedded in my psyche the benefits of being active, and the money and opportunity to be able to do almost whatever I like. My daughter has my example to follow and gets the opportunity to do a range of sports, from tennis to netball, swimming to gymnastics in the garden.

Most people aren’t that fortunate and for many people the Olympics and Paralympics will be a great spectacle but the feats and lives of our Olympians and Paralympians will feel like another world, and their sports out of reach. We need to do so much more to overcome the very real and cultural embedded barriers to being more active, especially amongst those least active who’d benefit most.

So what can we do? For me the answer is to build on these few short weeks of focus on such a wide range of sports, and wide range of athletes, to really connect people with their stories and showcase not just the range of sports but also the opportunities that exist for people to be more active back home. Every athlete is just another person, with hopes and fears, who found their passion for sport and way to be active in a community, with other people. And while they might love to compete and be successful, I bet most athletes have also found an experience they enjoy and share it with people they care about.

Longer-term we need to invest far more in creating choice and opportunity so that everyone can find their own way to be happier and healthier through being active. We’ve got to move away from this belief that elite sport will simply inspire people and instead use it as the catalyst to guide people towards inclusive, community-led opportunities like parkrun and ParkPlay that address barriers like cost. Investment needs to move away from sport which serves the already active very well, into giving wider choice and opportunity for the less active.

Rick Jenner, ParkPlay CEO

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