As we hurtle through the year, with the Summer solstice passed, England remarkably still in Euro 2024 (at time of writing) and the much-trailed General Election over, eyes are starting to turn to Paris, and the XXXIII Olympiad.

From 26th July to 11th August, 350,000 hours of TV broadcast will be dedicated to the Olympic Games, and many of us will become armchair experts in the more niche of the Olympic sports (‘Breaking’ anyone?). The Paralympics follow from 28th August, where we will be wowed by both the physical prowess of the world’s greatest para-athletes, and their phenomenal stories of triumph in adversity.

At Rise, whilst a lot of our work focusses more on movement and physical activity than on sport, they are all part of the same continuum and are all important to us as part of our Rise Together Strategy, as well as part of Sport England’s Uniting the Movement approach.

In recent months we have had the pleasure to lead on the delivery of the Path to Paris programme in Sunderland, in partnership with the School Games Organisers, Together for Children, Active Sunderland and Keep Active.

Working with 11 schools, Year 3 & 4 children were supported to collectively walk/run/wheel their way to Paris, covering the 555 miles from Sunderland to the French capital ahead of the Games.  All the schools were also treated to a VIP visit from Team GB Olympian, footballer and Lioness Demi Stokes as part of the celebration.

But alongside all the hype around the start of the Olympics and Paralympics, we must also be cognisant of broader topics that the Games are bringing to the surface, including issues around our climate crisis, and points around diversity and inclusion.

The Tokyo Games in 2021 were described as “the hottest games ever”, and concerns are again mounting three years later.

Paris’ annual temperatures have increased by 1.8C since 1924, and there are 23 more ‘hot’ days (+25C) and nine more ‘scorching’ (30C) days per year.

A new report from BASIS, Rings of Fire, has recently highlighted that if the planet continues to warm, sports as we know and love them are at risk. As recently referenced in The Guardian, for athletes competing in extreme heat, the health risks range from sunburn and heat cramps through to heat exhaustions or even collapse from heatstroke, a life-threatening condition.

Sport England’s recently released Every Move sustainability strategy takes a bold step to lay down a marker for how the sport and physical activity sector has a key part to play in tackling environmental issues, not least in order to address the existential threat to sport that climate change poses.

From a diversity and inclusion perspective, this Olympiad’s hosts, France, has also been battling its own issues in relation to its ban on head coverings such as the hijab being worn by its female athletes competing at the Games. The French government’s view regarding religious symbols directly conflicts with the Olympic core principle of equality, as well as the International Olympic Committee’s own regulations that permit athletes to express their religious beliefs, including wearing religious attire like the hijab. Both the UN Human Rights Office and Amnesty International have condemned the ban, stating that it infringes the rights and freedoms of Muslim women. The French government have defended their position based on a key tenant of the French republic, i.e. that the state and public institutions are expressly free of religious customs or symbols.

This example shines a spotlight on the issue of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in sport and physical activity, which is not only an issue at Olympic level, but filters down to grassroots participation in sport and physical activity too. The latest Sport England Active Lives data shows marginalised groups are over-represented within physical inactivity statistics, and the gap is widening.

But finally, on a completely different note, we are delighted to be celebrating the 4th birthday of Rise in its current form this month. Whilst not necessarily being a ‘big birthday’, it provides a great opportunity to reflect on the journey we have been on in that time period and the impact we are having to change the local system in Northumberland and Tyne & Wear in order that lives can be transformed by physical activity. Let’s hope that the XXXIII Olympiad can also transform lives for the better, despite the seismic issues that it is highlighting.