Save me from the parents’ race at this year’s school sports day

As a persistent athletics failure, Will Gore shudders at the prospect of an egg-and-spoon disaster

Please, please don’t force me into the egg-and-spoon race (Getty/iStock)

Wimbledon is in full swing. England’s men are trying to reinvent Test cricket. The Lionesses are hoping to come up trumps in the women’s Euros. And the World Athletics Championships are just around the corner. And amid all this glorious, top-draw competition, there is one event that ducks head and shoulders below the rest: school sports day.

While Scottish kids are gladly packing away their kit at the end of term, before turning on the telly and reaching for some Irn-Bru, their puny peers south of the border are entering peak sports day season. Pasty faces are being slapped with sun cream and misplaced high fives; warm-up drills are becoming unpleasantly competitive; and, across the land, infants are aiming for egg-and-spoon PBs while unathletic teens try desperately to avoid falling at the first hurdle, let alone the last.