Why do we try to win at everything?

Six nations rugby has started this weekend. England are making their usual dismal showing and watching them this afternoon, it is incredible to think that not too long ago, we won the rugby world cup. The Scotland/England match was an incredibly boring one except at the beginning of the second half with an almost immediate try by England. That was the only exciting thing that happened. 

There's something in the British character which doesn't make us good winners. We don't have the belief, drive or ambition somehow. And we try and spread ourselves too thinly and try and be good at everything, which just isn't possible. Most countries have the sense to identify what they are good at and direct most of their energies and sponsorship in that direction. 

Take the alpine nations - they excel at skiing, bobsleigh, biathlon and all the sports associated with nasty, slippery, cold ice, as you would expect. They don't particularly try to be good at rugby, footie, athletics or things like that because they know what they're good at. Top skiers in the alpine nations are treated as heroes in a similar way to the treatment football players get here. Kenyans can run like the wind, but you don't see them trying to play hockey. Bit of a generalisation, as I'm sure those sports are played, but they don't try and thrust themselves on the world stage at them.

We on the other hand try to be good at the lot - all the team sports (even though by and large the Brits are not great team players) all the lone player stuff (tennis, badminton etc) winter sport, summer sport, aquatics, equine and all. It's a mistake. You can't be good at everything. 

The Olympics this summer will give us another chance to try and win everything under the sun whereas really we ought to focus on the sailing (we are an island surrounded by water - most of it freezing cold and polluted but water none the less), equine sports and gun sports (we are a huntin', shootin' fishing' crowd in about 70% of the UK and there are vast numbers of horses in Britain) and track and field, which is taught in public schools and which has somehow a quintessentially British air about it. Forget the football, tennis, acrobatics, swimming and so on (Rebecca Adlington aside, what other famous British swimmers can you think of?), let's focus our effort on where we have a real chance.

I'm useless at sport as I have said before. I can't even run for a bus, can't catch and have no coordination whatsoever. I am the world's most clumsy woman and if there is something to drop, spill, break, fall over/down, trip over I will do it. I do have a good eye and used to be quite handy at shooting with a rifle (I had a schoolfriend whose dad was a farmer and let me have a go) but that's as far as it goes. So I'm no threat to those worthy people who fancy having a punt for a medal at any sport you care to name.

I do appreciate that I am not going to be able to change the Brit attitude to attempts at world domination. We have lost the empire and no longer have African slaves, so we're having a go through sport in much the same way as the Germans are trying to take over the world through fiscal dominance; the Greek finance minister is on camera as saying that Angela Merkel's proposal to put a German in change of the Greek Treasury would be like the start of World War III and another invasion! So I will have to put up with it, and watch valiant attempts across the whole spectrum of physical actvity, most of it doomed to failure.

I wish them well, but I suspect it may all end in tears!