When Winning Too Early Costs Too Much By Stuart Dempster

In the late 1990s, alongside my friend and fellow coach Fred Norwood, I helped establish a children’s athletics programme in Scotland called Best Foot Forward. The idea was born not out of commercial ambition, but concern.

For several years prior, we had witnessed what we believed to be inappropriate and harmful coaching practices involving children under the age of 12. In the depths of the Scottish winter, young athletes were being subjected to training volumes and intensities more suited to fully developed adults: repeated 200m, 300m and 400m efforts; long road runs; hill sessions involving sleds, heavy footwear, weighted jackets and hand weights — all while their bodies were still growing and developing.

The outcomes tended to follow one of two predictable paths:

A small minority appeared exceptionally strong and dominant at 13 or 14 years of age — often “unbeatable” in their age group.

Many more experienced burnout, chronic injury, or psychological fatigue. By 17 or 18, some were unable to replicate earlier performances and struggled to reconcile the gap between early success and later stagnation.

Early specialisation and excessive loading may produce short-term results. However, childhood sport should not be a race to peak before puberty.

Over a conversation in an Edinburgh pub, Fred and I asked a simple question:

What if children’s athletics felt like childhood?

That conversation became Best Foot Forward.

The programme ran across the three Scottish scholastic terms. During the winter months we operated out of primary school sports halls; in summer we moved to the track. Each group was limited to 20 children. Sessions began with engaging, playful warm-ups, followed by high-energy relay games. One relay — The Magic Roundabout — became legendary among the children. Many would ask before the session even began, “Are we doing Magic Roundabout today?”

Technical skills were introduced in age-appropriate ways. We practised long jump indoors, landing safely on gym mats. We introduced discus and shot through modified equipment and game-based challenges. The focus was time-on-task, movement literacy, enjoyment, and confidence.

Children left smiling — and wanting to return.

With the support of Norrie Williamson, then Edinburgh City Athletics Development Officer, the programme expanded to five centres across the city. Importantly, families no longer had to travel across Edinburgh on cold winter evenings. Athletics became local, accessible and welcoming.

That was the 1990s.

Yet, in the decades since, I have observed similar excessive training practices in multiple jurisdictions where I have lived and coached. While standards have improved in many areas, the “blood, sweat and tears” approach to children’s sport still persists in some environments.

We must be clear: intensity and discipline have their place in high-performance sport — but childhood is not high performance sport.

Shouting at children, dismissing distress with phrases such as “toughen up” or “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” or normalising tears as part of the process does not build resilience. It risks eroding confidence, wellbeing, and long-term engagement.

Children who associate sport with fear or humiliation often vote with their feet. And when they leave, they rarely return.

Encouragingly, some nations have formalised protections. For example, Norway has established a written Bill of Rights for children in sport, designed to ensure participation is safe, developmentally appropriate and enjoyable. It recognises that children are not miniature adults — they are developing human beings.

Parents play a crucial role. If a child consistently returns home distressed, fearful of training, or physically exhausted beyond reason, it warrants thoughtful conversation. Constructive dialogue with coaches and governing bodies can be powerful. Changing environments, when necessary, is not disloyalty — it is advocacy.

As a coaching community, we must continually ask ourselves:

Are we building athletes for adulthood — or extracting performances from children?

If similar practices occurred in medicine or education, professional oversight would be immediate and decisive. Sport should hold itself to the same ethical standard.

Children deserve challenge.
They deserve structure.
They deserve aspiration.

But above all, they deserve protection.

Because success at fourteen means very little if sport has taken everything from them by eighteen.

Childhood in sport should not be survived — it should be enjoyed