Poll Says Tennis Is Most Positive Sport
Barclays Spaces for Sports has revealed that tennis is recognised as producing the most positive global sporting role models in a recent poll gathering the opinions of 1,400 sports fans.
Current world number one Roger Federer has been voted the top male sports role model taking 18% of votes, whilst Steffi Graf was the top female role model with 20% of votes.
The poll also revealed that winning is not the most important thing when it comes to playing sport.
Sportsmanship (66%), health and fitness benefits (57%), teaching discipline and abiding by rules (60%) are all considered more significant benefits of playing sport than actually winning (22%).
The poll asked fans what their favourite top 10 moments of sportsmanship across global professional sports was over the last 50 years – Formula One produced the favourite moment when Graham Hill stopped during the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix to get Jackie Stewart out of his crashed car.
81% of sports fans see sport as ‘very important to society’, although there is still a consensus that there are not enough communal places to play sport. Less than a fifth (18%) of respondents felt sport was ‘very accessible in their local area’.
These responses underlined that local sports facilities should be more accessible. This is the aim of Barclays Spaces for Sports which launched in 2004.
Barclays Spaces for Sports is a community sport programme which has created 200 sustainable sports sites across the UK in partnership with the Football Foundation, as well as sites and projects in South Africa, Zambia, the United States and Spain.
