Fordyce Maxwell: 'For pushy confrontation you can't beat the parents of pony-riders'

PUSHY parents in sport – a good thing or bad? Discuss. No clues to my thinking, but bear in mind that I was once attacked on a football pitch by a woman with an umbrella shouting: "That's my laddie you're kicking."

Also bear in mind that the fury of a woman scorned is as nothing compared with the fury of a woman whose daughter has come second in any competition involving ponies.

In reaching my conclusion – you mean you've guessed? – I know about the success stories. People whose exceptional early talent was encouraged, we might say driven, enthusiastically by parents. Obsessively so on occasion, and at some cost to emotional development and sociability.

But helping make your children into multimillionaire sports stars can't be a bad thing, surely? True, but only a few make it and they tend to be outstanding from the beginning. It's the unfounded expectations for the also-rans that cause trouble – as anyone who has risked the touchline at an under-10s football match or queried the sack-race result at a primary school sports day can testify. Um, yes, me, but I only did it once then banned myself for life.

Face it, the net result in any human activity is the same – for every 10,000 triers, honest or otherwise, there is possibly one outstanding performer. And for every 10,000 or so of those you might get a Tiger Woods or Lewis Hamilton. On a more modest scale, for every footballer in the Premier league think of the thousands who started with dreams and saw them disappear.

Think how that is compounded if you are not allowed to learn life's lessons for yourself, but have disappointed a pushy parent who hoped to see their own sporting dreams achieved by proxy. Or, possibly worse, re-live sporting successes of their own.

Pushy parents are there even in the lower reaches where most of us struggle with sport. I see youngsters made nervous and mistake-prone by parents shouting from the sidelines. At the other extreme are those children given an exaggerated idea of their ability.

Unattractive either way, if understandable to someone inclined to argue about a goal in back-green football or a not-out decision in beach cricket. But it's no surprise to me that organisers of Hickstead top-of-the-range horse jumping competitions have banned some under-16 riders, and, more to the point their parents, for unacceptable behaviour. For full-frontal, pushy confrontation with other competitors, judges and the universe in general you can't beat the parents of pony-riders.

If I have previously mentioned judging a children's mounted fancy dress competition it is because of its residual impact, the only time I have been eyeball to eyeball with hatred. Unless I lose my marbles and ever again inadvertently award first prize and a lollipop to the show society president's granddaughter I will never again see so many women in one place grinding their teeth and frothing at the mouth more than the ponies they're holding.

Worryingly for the future of humanity, if I had been one of them I would have done exactly the same.