Policy

Too Many Privately Educated Athletes?

The head of Britain's Olympic team says dominance by athletes educated at private schools is "wholly unacceptable"

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Lord Moynihan said that about 50 per cent of the medals won by Team GB in Beijing in 2008 were secured by athletes educated in the independent sector, who made up just seven per cent of the population.

He described it as "one of the worst statistics in British sport", and said all Olympic sports should seek to be more like football, where the proportion of privately-educated players was seven per cent, mirroring society as a whole.