Sport for all

Sport for All” is a much-used slo­gan for pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns to en­cour­age peo­ple to get more ac­tive and do some ex­er­cise, but it's not as easy as that. “Lose weight”, “Stop smok­ing” “Eat health­ier” are all ex­am­ples of good ad­vice. How­ever, if you hap­pen to be over­weight, a smoker or you eat badly, it could be a case of “eas­ier said than done”. Sport is tough, by de­f­i­n­i­tion. It is as much of a com­mit­ment to watch all the matches, read all the re­ports and mem­o­rise the league ta­bles, as it is to do pull-ups, go run­ning or swim­ming. Sport isn't easy be­cause apart from the com­mit­ment in time and de­ter­mi­na­tion, it is also phys­i­cally de­mand­ing. But sport is good. The val­ues and the phys­i­cal ben­e­fits it pro­vides to every­one in so­ci­ety is un­de­ni­able. That means any ini­tia­tive that pro­motes sport, that en­cour­ages it in our chil­dren, that helps peo­ple un­ac­cus­tomed to ex­er­cise to take the plunge, that dis­plays hu­man­ity at its best (and oc­ca­sion­ally its worst), should al­ways be pro­moted.

On pages 32-35 of this month's issue, we have a re­port pro­vid­ing an overview of the lat­est pro­ject for the Olympic Sta­dium in Barcelona. Open Camp is the venue's new ten­ant, an ini­tia­tive that aims to pro­mote sport by plac­ing vis­i­tors in the shoes of pro­fes­sional sports peo­ple and ath­letes, al­low­ing them to try out the dis­ci­pline for them­selves while at the same time gain­ing an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of its at­trac­tions at the high­est level. If you've never played base­ball or taken a penalty in front of a crowd, or taken your marks be­fore a 100-metre sprint, then Open Camp could be the place for you. I haven't been yet, but I in­tend to, as it sounds promis­ing to me, both as a fan and as a prac­ti­tioner.

With the Sant Jordi in­door sta­dium reg­u­larly host­ing con­certs and trade fairs on the one side, and the Joan An­toni Sama­ranch Olympic and Sports Mu­seum on the other, and given how im­por­tant the 1992 Olympics was to the city of Barcelona, it's great to see the Olympic fa­cil­i­ties put to good use. More often than not the grand ar­chi­tec­tural won­ders built for major in­ter­na­tional events end up be­com­ing white ele­phants. Barcelona's Olympic Sta­dium also runs that risk, so it is ex­tremely pos­i­tive to see its role as an im­por­tant land­mark in the city more firmly es­tab­lished. I for one al­ways in­clude it on my check­list when­ever I'm show­ing new­com­ers around the Cata­lan cap­i­tal for the first time.

Open Camp of­fi­cially opens its doors on June 16, so let's check it out. I don't know about you, but I've never hit a home run!