Former Olympic Minister Laments London 2012 Legacy

(ATR) Lack of school sport participation in the United Kingdom is a "wasted opportunity" from the 2012 Games, a former Olympics minister says.

Tessa Jowell, minister for the Olympics at the time London was awarded the 2012 Olympics, said to BBC radio that the Games failed to live up to their promise of encouraging young people to take up sport in the U.K.

"My particular concern is that the second legacy promise was to transform a generation of young people through sport," Jowell said.

"Children in school now are playing less sport than they were in 2009. That's why it is a wasted opportunity."

Jowell says that cuts in funding for sport in schools across the U.K. from the "wicked and negligent successors" to the government she served in have led to the decline in participation. Jowell served as Olympic minister from 2005 to 2010 for the Labor party. She is currently a candidate for the 2016 London Mayoral election.

"We had a model of organization that was the envy of so many other sporting countries around the world, that provided the organizational framework to make sure that the matches were organized, notes went home so parents knew when their kids were coming home," Jowell said.

"That structure of organization has been dismantled. And the evidence is that if you don't tell schools that the money for sport is dedicated to sport, it's spent on other things."

Despite the cuts to sports in school, Jowell believes that the re-invigoration of the East End of London was a major positive from the Games, calling it "extraordinary."

"[There is] a whole new park in east London, venues which are used both for elite sport and for the community," Jowell said.

"The regeneration has been extraordinary. That is absolutely the case."

Written by Aaron Bauer

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