Lord Coe: London Olympics legacy will help Rio’s schoolchildren

 
Gift: Lord Coe says London “set a bar”
File photo dated 07/10/2011 of Lord Sebastian Coe. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Wednesday October 16, 2013. Sebastian Coe will play a key role in overseeing the preparations for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, it has been announced. See PA story SPORT
Anna Davis @_annadavis21 October 2013

Sebastian Coe has defended the legacy of the London Olympics for schoolchildren, saying it has “set a bar” for the Rio Games in 2016.

Lord Coe said criticism of the sporting legacy from London 2012 was “unfounded” and the organisers of the Rio Games could learn from the way the capital handled its Olympics.

Ofsted has called for a clearer school sport strategy, and MPs on the Commons education committee have warned that £150 million of government money, announced in March for primary school sport, could end up as a “gimmick” because funding was only in place for two years.

Graham Stuart, the education committee’s chairman, said that although the Olympics generated “massive enthusiasm”, more needed to be done to ensure short-term plans and funding constraints did not stop momentum.

Speaking to the Times Educational Supplement, Lord Coe, who was chairman of London’s organising committee Locog, said: “Have we set Brazil a bar? Yes we have, just as the Games before set us the challenge. Sydney set us the challenge just as Beijing did. Every Games creates their own bar.”

He added that the deal to inject more money into school sport — which he helped negotiate between the Cabinet and the departments of health, education, and culture, media and sport — was a “first in his political lifetime.”

Coe received backing from David Hemery, who won the 400m hurdles and set a world record at the 1968 Games in Mexico.

Dr Hemery, founder of 21st Century Legacy, a charity that uses the London Olympics to inspire pupils, said the 2012 Games were a “real model to Rio”. He added: “I don’t think very many other countries have mentioned a legacy to quite such a degree as London, and I think we have given a gift to the rest of the world.”

Lord Coe said Rio was an opportunity to have an impact on 280 million young South Americans: “In going to Rio, the Games are not just going to a city for the first time, or a country for the first time, they are going to a continent for the first time.” The organisers plan to help 800,000 Brazilian pupils try a broader range of sports.

But protesters across Brazil have argued that cash being spent on the 2014 World Cup and the Olympics would be better used supporting the country’s underfunded public services, including health and education.

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