IN THE past few weeks, AW’s pages have given much focus to the alarming dropout rate from the sport during the teenage years and beyond. Recently,
Mel Watman analysed the contrasting fortunes of every winner from the 2006 English Schools to unearth a shocking rate of departure from the sport. And last week, Emily Dudgeon put forward her own views about what can be done to stem this loss of talent.
In this week’s Performance pages, we revisit the troubling issue with an encouraging report on new research to tackle it. Robert Mann and a team from the University of Exeter are working with England Athletics to determine what is going wrong and whether we are guilty of asking too much of young athletes before they mature.