"'The Government is doing its best to promote healthy living - that's what the smoking ban is about. They know they need to crack down on obesity, but if you are closing swimming pools, how does that help you to promote good health? What's more, if you close pools, you will ultimately diminish our performance in the sport.'

Foster worries that swimming is no longer an option in this country for millions of potentially talented children whose local pool may have been closed. 'If a teenaged Mark Foster was coming along today it would be a lot more difficult than it was when I was young,' he said.

'I think the sport in general is becoming a lot more middle-class. Your parents have to have a car to drive you to the nearest pool or you are stuffed, and that can't be right.'"

(Via Mark Foster's Beijing Olympics dream - Telegraph: .)

| newspapers | 1 April 2008; 10:32:01 AM |# | | Discuss |