This week’s round-up comes in the form of a wide range of stories which reflect the diversity of the sport and recreation sector itself.

First off the Sport and Recreation Alliance featured in the The Guardian, who covered the launch of our new Sports Betting Group website and code of practice. We’ve designed these resources to help sports to tackle betting corruption – one of the biggest threats to sport, and it couldn’t come at a better time with a whole host of sports at risk of being targeted during the Olympics.

In other news, The Telegraph brought the public forest debate back to the fore, arguing that the Government’s proposal to “dispose of some 40,000 hectares of public forests” was the “best decision it never made”. It’s one of the Alliance’s key priorities to ensure that access to forests and woodlands isn’t compromised for sport and recreation, and with comments emerging that “we are not out of the woods just yet” we’ll be continuing to work hard in this area.

On the subject of the great outdoors we came across a great article highlighting some of the country’s most creative playgrounds. It’s worth taking a look at some of these initiatives in more detail as they are pretty amazing. Wouldn’t it be good to see more of these outdoor spaces around in our urban area as they would surely help to get more children out the house and active?

I will leave you with a story from journalist Jim White, who argues that South Africa’s decision to select Oscar Pistorious on to their Olympic team “epitomises the spirit of the Games”. Whilst Pistorious’s high tech blades may have caused selection controversy, it cannot be denied that this man has defied all the odds to get where he is today – which is indeed what the Olympics should be all about.

We also have some great new blogs for you this week, so don’t forget to take a look.

Best wishes

Tim
 

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