Greetings my hard-working little feetlings,

While you've all been running hard and clocking up the miles, blisters, and black toenails, I've been seeing what's afoot out there in the sporting world.

It seems these days that if you want to get ahead in sport get a private education. According to UK Sport, almost a third of British athletes taking part in the London 2012 Olympics will be privately educated.

It's a sad fact that the state system is just not producing the numbers of quality athletes that it should do despite £1.5bn of public money being spent since 2005 on promoting PE in state schools - all aimed at encouraging kids to become the new generation of athletes for 2012.

So where's it going wrong? Are all the state school kids being overfed on junk food and fizzy drinks while the snooty nosed private schools raise potential champions? Clearly there's more to it than that, and the gap between the state and independent sector in terms of sports provision is about as wide as my foot-faced grin.

I always found it was a nightmare clocking up the miles round my local council-owned track while dodging the verbal abuse from the lunch time crew who clearly had dreams of getting smashed on cider that weekend rather than Olympic glory. Maybe that's what held my foot back from realising its true potential.

One guy not failing to realise his potential (somewhat late in life) is Yoshihisa Hosaka who continues to break record after record. Following up his 60+ world record of 2:36:30 at the 2009 Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon, he has just done it again this weekend with a 2:38:12 world record for the 61 year old bracket.

The amazing marathoner now holds the world record for three consecutive age brackets. (59 - 2:34:23; 60 - 2:36:30, 61 - 2:38:12). You have to wonder how much longer he can go on or whether it might be worth Footnote using his influence to talk Steve Ovett into a comeback so he can peak in five years time when he will be 60.

Tags: sporting performance, private education, olympics, london 2012

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