Brown is throwing away Britain's Beijing bounce

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has failed to understand the real meaning of the Beijing bounce and is ill-equipped to deliver wider participation in sport in the run-up to 2012 unless Gordon Brown steps in to lead from the front."

So says Derek Mapp, the outspoken former chairman of Sport England, the body charged with investing in and promoting community sport in England.

Mapp, 58, a self-made millionaire who resigned his chairmanship of Sport England 10 months ago after a row about the agency's change of direction with the then Culture Secretary, James Purnell, says: "The DCMS has told Sport England to forget about its priority of getting two million more people to participate in sport by 2012 and to focus instead on achieving excellence for established athletes in a few defined competitive sports."

It's a big mistake, insists Mapp, because Beijing offers us a window of opportunity to change profoundly our society for the better, bringing improved health benefits, fitness, social cohesion and a reduction in crime.

"I'm just as proud of our gold medallists in Beijing as anyone," he says, "but the pride and reflected glory we feel is transitory and in three months' time, apart from athletes like Chris Hoy and Rebecca Adlington, we'll have forgotten the names of 80 per cent of the winners. Are we, as taxpayers, really investing in sport simply because we want to beat the French? Or do we want to see a tangible benefit for our children and an opportunity to get involved ourselves?"

Throwing his support behind the Evening Standard charter to deliver the 2012 sporting legacy - which is about developing a culture with sports and fitness at its core and includes providing more facilities at grassroots level - Mapp nevertheless wonders: "Where is Sport England in all this? Why is it not leading the charge? Why is it left to the Evening Standard to set the agenda on sporting legacy?"

In his first full interview since leaving Sport England, Mapp's excoriating attack goes to the heart of a confusion that has bedevilled Sport England - funded by £240 million of government and Lottery funds - as to what its funding priorities should be.

"When I headed up Sport England, I dared to challenge the Government: if the Lawn Tennis Association has millions of pounds in the bank from private sponsorship, why are we using government money to bankroll them? Same story with the Football Association. Around 70 per cent of our funding went to the big four - football, cricket, rugby and tennis - whose governing bodies are focused on producing the next champion rather than facilities for the community.

"Surely, I said, we should be getting more kids into boxing gymnasiums and helping new sports, like basketball, yoga and street-dance aerobics that are tremendously popular with young people? I had a survey which showed that despite a £1 billion investment in sport by Sport England over 16 years, there had been no increase in sporting participation, and that 51 per cent of the population did no sport at all."

Mapp's views did not go down well. Now, nearly a year after he was forced to quit, the post - which pays £45,000 for two days a week - remains unfilled despite multiple attempts to find a new chairman. "The fact that Sport England is still without a leader is an indictment of the Government and its mixed messages," Mapp says. Recently, Sir Keith Mills, 57, former chief executive of London's bid to stage the 2012 Games and the acknowledged brains behind the campaign, was sounded out and allegedly offered the post. He turned it down.

"Mills called me, as have a number of other candidates who have been approached by DCMS," says Mapp. "They wanted to ask for my views on such things as to whether the Government would interfere, and on Sport England's direction." And? "I gave them my candid views," he laughs.

Mapp is well-connected in Labour circles and has a long friendship with former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and former sports minister Richard Caborn. But despite being on less pally terms with the Brown administration, he won't be drawn on the names of the other candidates.

Is he angry and bitter at being forced out? "No, just disappointed," he says. "I felt we had a strategy that would have made a difference to society. I haven't spoken out until now because I didn't want to become the Chris Woodhead of sport, moaning about the Government at every opportunity. I feel, though, that the Standard is spearheading an important campaign, and that with Gordon Brown and Sport England failing to provide leadership, it's time to speak out."

Mapp's passion for the job also had a personal dimension.

"I sit here with stage two diabetes because at one point in my life, between 25 and 40, all I did was work and eat fast-food," he says. "I grew up on a council estate, my mother sold soap at a market stall, and after leaving school at 17, I started from scratch working in a pub, then built my own chain - called Tom Cobleigh - which I grew to 78 pubs. I was working my nuts off and making my fortune [Mapp is worth well over £6 million], but my lifestyle was unhealthy and I became obese, weighing 17-and-a-half stone."

Today, he says, he eats properly and exercises regularly and has lost more than two stone but the damage is done and he is on daily medication for diabetes. So when Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell appointed him in October 2006 with a specific brief - to drive up participation in sport in England by two million people by 2012 - he felt he was helping to make sure people did not end up like him.

"At that point," recalls Mapp, "Sport England was a mess. Staff morale was low, it had no leadership and no mission. My job was supposed to be two days a week but I ended up going in four. Within a few months, we had a detailed plan which included widening the net of sports we helped but when Brown came in and replaced Tessa Jowell with James Purnell, everything changed.

"One day Purnell called me from his car. He said he was on his way to Buckingham Palace where he was to be sworn in as a privy counsellor and had to be brief. He told me he wanted Sport England to increase excellence in sport. I said: 'What about participation?' 'That's secondary,' he told me. I said: 'How are you defining sport? Does it include recreational cycling, for example?' 'I don't know,' he told me.

"Later I saw his political adviser and bluntly asked: 'What the f*** is going on? Can we have some clarity here? This is not what I signed up to deliver when I took this job.'"

Surely Mapp could accommodate both? After all, you can't get excellence in sport unless there is a broad base of participation and people are inspired to try a sport by seeing their countrymen achieve gold medals at the Olympics.

"Precisely," says Mapp. "You need both. But there must be a link from grassroots to the elite. Because unless there is a conduit between the kid who walks into the gym for the first time and the polished athlete who stands on a podium with a gold medal round his neck, we will have failed.

"I revised our strategy at Sport England so we would achieve increased participation and excellence but a few days later, I was called into a meeting at DCMS and Purnell asked me to leave because I hadn't signed up to his mandate."

According to a spokesperson at Sport England, the goal of expanding sports participation by two million people still exists, it's just that only one million is the responsibility of Sport England with the rest allocated to other government departments. Mapp is sceptical. "Which department will be held responsible when the other one million is not delivered? There's no accountability."

So what needs to happen in order to deliver the 2012 sporting legacy? "We must optimise the use of existing sports facilities by removing barriers that prevent wider use, such as inconvenient opening times and high prices," he says. "The Government must invest in a coaching and volunteer infrastructure. We must have a joined-up plan for sport by creating links between Sport England and the Youth Sport Trust, which oversees sport in schools, and UK Sport, which looks after our elite athletes. And we must remember that sport is not just for the young, and that we should reflect the fact that the elderly should benefit too in our funding.

"But ultimately, none of this will happen unless the Prime Minister leads from the front by creating a crossgovernment initiative that puts building a sports legacy at the heart of his agenda. The benefits of doing so are immense, not just in terms of health and fitness, but also for building citizenship and reducing crime.

"The truth is, we all feel inspired by Beijing but in the long-term, building a sporting legacy is more about improving our quality of life and less about becoming world-beaters. The choice Sport England faces is simple: is it for the few or for the many?"