I am blown away by the facilities you have in the United States, especially the running tracks at high school and colleges. Even your roads and sidewalks look nice and clean and wide. In the UK we have narrow pavements, potholes, congestion on the roads and canal paths which are dominated by dog walkers and cyclists. I am sick of the lot of them. The council own my local running track and I can't get access at any time except for the club meet on a Monday evening.
We are wider people, so we need wider roads and pavements to accommodate our and our cars’ giant azzes and also more running tracks begging those wideasses to please burn some fat.
It's a long time ago when I studied for a bit in the UK. Surprisingly , it felt a little poor even then. Now after following Brexit, it seems the UK is even worse than the US. And don't get distracted by the fancy schools in the US. It's only good for the people who can afford them, everybody else needs to stay out and that includes the publicly funded track.
I am blown away by the facilities you have in the United States, especially the running tracks at high school and colleges. Even your roads and sidewalks look nice and clean and wide. In the UK we have narrow pavements, potholes, congestion on the roads and canal paths which are dominated by dog walkers and cyclists. I am sick of the lot of them. The council own my local running track and I can't get access at any time except for the club meet on a Monday evening.
Not to mention, in the UK you are likely to get slammed by a car since they have no intention or obligation to yield to pedestrians at an intersection.
Compared to the rest of the world, the UK has few sporting facilities. Some may argue that you can find a place to play almost any sport in the UK and they may be right. But let me ask you this? Do you enjoy playing football on the street pavement? Is that what you call facility? The UK football leagues are full of talent, but they lack the proper facility to host a competitive match. A top quality field, good referees and decent stadia, they are all things the UK is missing.
As with a lot of things in the UK it depends on where you live. COVID hit some tracks very hard and many councils were already behind on maintenance for them.
When I started running my club had a cinder track and it was better than nothing. But where I live now we have four good tracks within 5 miles. Sadly this is not true for elsewhere.
The states have plenty of tracks but you can't use them. There are also plenty of track meets, but they're only for people in school meets for the most part.
Local government seems to be in freefall in the UK and is mainly run for the benefit of its employees. They keep reducing services to ludicrous levels but increasing taxation. Meanwhile, the left wing mainly socialist population lap it up because they are told its essential to "tackle poverty". We literally have the richest poor people in the world here, so much so that people risk crossing the English channel on dinghies to get here. "Poor" here means not being able to buy a nice 2 bedroom house when you're 23 and have a low paid job, or having to pay normal city prices to rent a 2 bedroom apartment.
An example of local government cost cutting - my local authority closed the running track in my city for housing development, meaning athletes have had to train around a local park for the last 3 years or so. That park has a small public toilet but.... its locked at 5pm. Most athletes train after 6pm.
Its actually pretty depressing how few services are provided in return for rather high taxes. But most of the people here don't seem to notice.
US wastes tons of public money on sports facilities for high schools.
hate to say it, but it's true. it's keeping up with the joneses on steroids.
I live within a mile of 2 middle schools with newly resurfaced all-weather tracks better than I ever ran on in HS. I'm not sure they even have track teams, or how they justify the expense, but I'll take it.