Culture crises across sports are a warning siren: we cannot keep ignoring the lessons

L ike waves, culture crises roll in and out of our sporting shores. Rugby and cricket have been in the headlines recently. A string of reviews have investigated Olympic and Paralympic sports including cycling, archery, bobsleigh, para-swimming, judo and gymnastics. The problem with this regularity of cultural emergencies is that it’s fast becoming the norm, part of what we expect in high-performance sport, rather than a warning sign that something is going badly wrong in these environments and that the fixes to date are not working.

Normalising these cultures reinforces the narrative that underpins them: sport is tough and athletes need to be prepared to do whatever it takes, no questions asked. Carrying on like this would be wilful blindness. Rather we should be asking what is going wrong in high-performance sport? What could we do differently to chart a better, healthier path for elite sport? And is this a peculiarly British phenomenon, or are there lessons to learn from abroad?

In Canada, athletes are currently banding together across hockey, soccer, boxing, bobsleigh, rugby, gymnastics and rowing to denounce toxic cultures of abuse and discrimination and drive change. Pascale St-Onge, the minister for sport, acknowledged there was a “safe sport crisis” in the country and pledged government action. St-Onge meets monthly with AthletesCAN, a body representing Canadian athletes to discuss systemic change. The voice of athletes is at last being listened to at the highest level.

Changes are happening on both sides of the Atlantic. Greater mental health support is offered, though in Canada it lasts beyond sporting retirement. The Canadian government recently set up the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner and UK