It's not my expertise, but my understanding was that a number of years ago there was a trend towards non-competitive sports. I think we've moved back away from that position much more to the idea where children can compete, and it seems quite a good idea to give them some incentive to compete against one another. But we did have a phase where we went away from the idea of letting children compete, seeing that it could be bad for them in some sense.
On February 26th, 2007. See this statement in context.