Dumbing down for the dummies?

London Fields Lido - Pre-renovation, with tache.

There's nothing worse than coming home riled up by something and banging out a full blown passionate blog entry...and then realising at the end of the process that you're probably on the wrong side of the argument.

*sigh*

London 2012. It seems only yesterday one of the peaks of the sporting landscape was in London. Not Russian-owned, Sloane-eyed, French manicured West London. But here in East London - layered across the little suburbs who could of Hackney and Tower Hamlets. Making real before our eyes the Olympic pledge of revitalisation of places which for decades had struggled along in the blind-spot of political will.

And it was wonderful. Britain shone. Women won gold medals, silver medals and bronze medals. They were celebrated in newspapers, on the TV and radio not for what they wore, or who they were married to, and not for one-off body parts but for strength, and speed and skill. We talked about maintaining the focus on sport as a means to deliver health, hope and social advancement. We have talked about raising the profile of women's sport after these Games. I believe we meant it. So why, in its women's-only swimming hour, has my local pool decided to focus on pool noodle water aerobics? Why has it chosen to dumb down sport for women and blunt ambition for sporting skill?

Last Tuesday evening I went to my local pool in London Fields in Hackney to do some long distance training. This pool is a gem. It's one of very few outdoor 50m pools in the UK and attracts a wide range of people from paddlers to serious swimmers. It was originally opened in the 30s - like a lot of the UK's lidos - and was re-opened after refurbishment in 2006.

From 7pm to 8pm on Tuesday evenings the pool is open to women only. I don't agree with this policy since both men and women contribute to the pool's operation via local taxes, but I can live with it. I can certainly understand some women might feel uncomfortable wearing swimsuits in front of men, but on the basis most of the lifeguards remain men during this slot the theory lapses in practice. But it's not something I feel that strongly about and women have long suffered exclusion and discomfort in public spaces at the whim of men.

What I do feel strongly about is the pool's decision to dumb down the sport and this facility to the point where it is unrecognisable as sport. With music cranked up until the water vibrated, a poolside gym instructor led about a dozen women through a coloured foam rodeo. It looked like a dozen clowns drowning with their balloon animals. The music was so loud it was impossible to relax, think technique, count laps or do anything other than endure dripping wet Justin Beiber. It wasn't just loud, it was utterly depressing. If this is the legacy of the Olympics, I want my money back.

I know people reading this will say hang on! It's about participation!' or 'But I use water aerobics for my knee rehab! Don't be a snob!' Right? No! Wrong!

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

This legacy of the Olympics should be about striving, about excellence, and about ambition for the people of Britain, and in this case Hackney. This pool is one of Britain's rarest sporting environments and instead of leveraging its power and the skills of people who could teach high quality swimming, the company who operate the pool - Greenwich Leisure - have sunk the pool to the lowest level. They have, effectively, said to women, 'we know you don't think you can swim. You're right! So let's have fun doing something utterly useless that you'll quickly tire of and which will leave you with no lifelong skills at all, but which ticks our Hackney Council box of 'inclusion.' Job done! Thanks for playing!

Girls are culturally raised to be safe, conscientious, and quiet. They are raised to try hard, smile when they (expect to) lose and to put others before themselves. They are raised not to make mistakes, and not to be loud and not to be aggressive. They are raised not to be ambitious, because they are told through invisible signals all through their lives that a woman who is ambitious is not liked. Worse, dangerous. They are raised, not to put it too bluntly, to like pool noodle aerobics! Read Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In and she will list you numerous scientific studies which show this to be true (I mean the bit about ambitious women, not actually studies on pool noodle aerobics). Even women are shown to fear and mistrust ambitious women. Ambition in men, however, is totally different and is encouraged subconsciously by mothers of boys, fathers of boys and friends of boys. Women thrive in the ordered environs of school, but don't do well in life.

And yet. And yet we love Rebecca Adlington. We love Jessica Ennis. We love women who win at sport - because we saw it all at the Olympics last year. These athletes come to win, or at the very least to be the best version of themselves possible. So let's use sport, real sport, to expand women's horizons. Let's use the few top class facilities we have to get hold of women and team them to swim, and swim better, faster, and further, whether that's 200m, or 10km.

If you think I'm being politically incorrect by suggesting women need this sort of intervention then I'll point no further than the Government's programme launch last week doing just this same thing in business. We need to shake women up, and show them what can be done. This isn't because they can't do it, it's because they are still not raised to do it. They are raised to settle for comedy non sports. We have been let down over and over again and if we keep dumbing down things like sport, or education, or the workplace, then we won't ever set our sights higher.

I predict the women who attend these noodle aerobics classes will attend 4, maybe 6 sessions in summer. They will have fun for a while, then it will rain and they'll get bored, and find other things to do. Then it will be winter and the noodles will be packed away for another season. These women will drift back home with no swimming fitness, no confidence to train on their own and no high level swimming skills. And they will miss the beauty of the pool in winter looking like a hot Turkish salon, its quiet lovely lanes, its muscle toning, lung expanding magic.


I asked the manager and assistant at London Fields what other people's feedback was - and the answer is mixed. Some people love the idea of the pool offering different things. Others, like another woman in reception at the time, feel the same way I do, and agree that men would never be subjected to such low-brow fob offs.


I mentioned my anguish to two people this week. One man, and one woman. The woman, a fellow swimmer, wrote back 'but think of the COMEDY value! Surely it's worth it for that?' No. I sighed. It's not. I want more. I'm saying let's not make women's fitness a thing of comedy. Let's not say 'aim low and hit the ground.' Let's make it about high achievement, and skill, and goals. Instead, currently, it's ambition in the slow lane. And it's not just women. When I first started swimming at the pool, in 2008, I asked if they offered private lessons for kids. No, they said, they didn't. I was staggered. Here's a dream chance to make some money off middle class ambition but they weren't having a bar of it. The second person I mentioned my argument too is a man. He didn't agree with me, saying who cares what the exercise is, it's exercise. But he was incensed about women's hour and suggested that was the real problem.

So after a week's thinking I've come to the conclusion that technically I probably am wrong to say that pool noodle aerobics is nothing but sexist devil's work, but the spirit of my argument and feeling on the matter is the right one. I'm suspicious of dumbing down activities for the sake of popularity - see UKIP, Page 3 in The Sun etc - or an easy life. I think the value of this special place is not done justice by pool noodle aerobics and, being something of an evangelist for swimming, I think these women are missing out on the King of Sports.