TEAM GB’s Olympic medal frenzy has left this viewer with mixed emotions.

On the one hand it’s great to see elite athletes doing so record-breakingly well. On the other hand, half the population can’t run for the bus. Individual athletes out-performing international opposition (and their own previous personal bests) do inspire the rest of us. But by and large the activity/sport/health/fitness profile of Britain is like its income profile – riven with inequality. And Scotland’s no different. Britain may have won more medals than China with a tiny fraction of its vast population – but off the podium, Chinese people aren’t struggling with the obesity, diabetes and inactivity epidemic that blights non-elite-athlete Britain. Could that be because “achievement” in Britain measures the success of talented individuals at the top of their games, whereas in China and many other countries success also measures the capacity of the average citizen?

Only southern Tories still adhere to the quaint notion that tax breaks, government support and bent rules for a few high fliers create wealth that reliably trickles down to everyone else. But strangely, progressive folk do hold that same discredited theory when it’s applied to sporting achievement – even though statistics show sporting elites (while more deserving, entertaining and inspiring) are just as unlikely to confer proxy health benefits on everyone else.

A report published in June showed the number of people regularly playing sport in England has actually fallen since the 2012 London Olympics, despite the Games’ pledge to “inspire a generation”. Sport England data reveals 15.8 million people play sport or exercise at least once week, a drop of 0.4 per cent since 2012. The biggest decline is amongst people from economically-deprived groups with 2.9 per cent fewer reporting regular sporting activity – that’s 365,100 people. Are they suffering Olympic withdrawal symptoms or might cuts to school sports and council services along with sky-high admission charges to sports centres have more to do with it? Folk surviving on charity, nerves, zero-hours contracts and food banks don’t generally have the belief, optimism, energy or money for sport, exercise or relaxation.

The picture in Scotland looks rosier but since a different survey method here, results are not directly comparable with England.

SportScotland statistics published last month show the overall number of people registered to sports clubs has risen from 706,764 to 768,212 since the year before the London Olympics and Glasgow Commonwealth Games. The rise applies to almost all sports and across all age groups. Cricket, for example, has seen a 50 per cent rise in participation to 17,000 over the past two years. That’s great but is registration with a sports club really the best way to gauge who’s actively involved in sport? I’m a fairly active walker and cyclist – but I’m not in any club. Why doesn’t Scotland use England’s more straightforward measure of weekly involvement? Might we be shocked if we did?

Certainly compared to our Nordic neighbours, the activity levels of the average Scot are alarming.

According to the most recent statistics, 82 per cent of Norwegian adults exercise regularly at least once a week, only six per cent never do any kind of sport and the gender gap is small. 81 per cent take regular walks in the forests and mountains, 45 per cent cycle on a regular basis, 42 per cent ski, 40 per cent jog, 39 per cent do strength training, 26 per cent swim and 22 per cent do alpine sports.

It’s hard to compare with Scotland once again, because here walking for 30 minutes is considered sporting activity. 59 per cent of Scots have done this in the previous four weeks (there’s no measurement of regular year-round activity) but fewer than one-in-five has undertaken any other individual activity.

After walking, swimming is the next most popular Scottish sport with 18 per cent participation in the last month. But in Norway more people swim regularly than Scots even though swimming is one of Norway’s least popular sports. 82 per cent of Norwegians hike regularly but only 42 per cent of Scottish adults visited the outdoors on a weekly basis in 2012. These visits did not necessarily constitute a “hike” in Norwegian terms and the Scots total was the lowest recorded since 2006. Of those who did “hike” here, most visited parks (41 per cent) with relatively few visiting mountains and moorland (10 per cent) and twice that number (21 per cent) making no visits outdoors in the previous year (up from 17 per cent in 2011).

Is all of this because Norwegians have more TV coverage of elite athletes? Actually, TV and radio coverage of men’s and women’s sports is wall-to-wall during winter months. But far more importantly, Norway has sorted two big structural problems Scots have yet to really address; access to the Great Outdoors and access to excellent, affordable outdoor early years care. Looking first at outdoor access, the two countries have had very different sporting histories. Norway has 43 national parks – the first established in 1962. Scotland has two national parks – the first established in 2002 and neither is a wilderness area owned by the government as national parks are in Norway. Indeed, across the piece, formal rights of access to the outdoors in Scotland have typically occurred half a century later than Norway, have been less far-reaching and have not changed or challenged the dominance of private, sporting estates. Outdoor experience begins almost at birth in Norway – informally in near universally available family weekend cabins (hytter) and formally in kindergarten. Children in Norway not only have the right to affordable childcare between the ages of one and six, they also have the right to be outdoors at least one day per week. Many kindergartens achieve this by allowing children to spend virtually all of their time outdoors. Anders Farstad, a kindergarten leader in southern Norway has written about the learning benefits that come with open space;

“Nature gives us a lot of freedom. There are no walls or regulations to shut us in. So the children don’t have to shout or fight to gain a bit of space or attention from grown-ups. The role of the kindergarten leader is also different from being indoors. It is no longer a matter of keeping the children silent and in quiet activities. Outdoors there are some simple rules like: ‘Don’t go any further than you can see a grown-up or we can see you.’ In this way the children come to us for help or advice and watch how we do practical things.”

According to another comparative report, “Being outdoors all the time, the [Norwegian] children stay healthy… they are almost never ill compared to children in indoor kindergartens.”

Perhaps this explains why the average Norwegian is streets ahead of the average Scot in health, fitness, happiness and sporting league tables.

Meanwhile Scotland’s mountain bothies have been in the news this week after complaints that commercial companies are hogging the space and edging hardy mountaineers out. It’s bad form on the part of outdoor businesses but no wonder organised groups use these wee huts – there’s nothing else to access on our mountains if you aren’t able to camp. Again the creature-comfort-free nature of the Scottish Highlands is largely down to Scotland’s monopoly landowners and again, it’s very different across the North Sea.

The Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT) has 240,000 members in 57 local member organisations across the country and a Children’s Trekking Club with 16,000 members under the age of 12. DNT owns 460 cabins and mountain huts throughout the country – some self-service, others staffed, and many serving dinner and breakfast. It means a few days hiking doesn’t mean a heavy rucksack and that enables far more women, children and less able folk to get into the hills. The cabins range from large lodges with nearly 200 beds to small sheds with a few bunk beds. All hikers turning up for the night are guaranteed a place to stay – even if it’s just a mattress on the floor at peak times in the busiest cabins. DNT was set up in 1868, owns all its own huts and cabins, maintains one of Europe’s largest marked hiking trail networks (20,000 km) and probably the world’s most extensive cross-country skiing track network (7,000 km). DNT volunteers put in more than 175,000 hours every year.

By contrast the Scottish Mountain Bothy Association was founded almost a century later in 1965 and arose from the practice of secretly staying overnight in half-ruined labourers cottages in the years after the Second World War when the advent of jeeps, centralisation of farm production and eviction of tenant farmers left many farmsteads empty. The MBA owns no bothies, but maintains them subject to the agreement of landowners. According to the MBA website the huts are basic.

“You should only expect to find a wind and waterproof building with somewhere dry to sleep. Do not expect the bothy to have toilet facilities.” No charge is made to use the bothies and they are not bookable. Like the DNT, the MBA is staffed by volunteers who maintain the huts. But the Scottish MBA has just 3,600 members compared to the DNT’s quarter of a million – even though Scotland has a slightly larger population.

Come on – who are we kidding?

Scotland’s idea of sport fits snuggly inside the top-down British pattern where attention and cash goes to a relatively few elite athletes at the top and the big, structural changes that would help achieve sporting equity are fudged or sidelined. Don’t get me wrong – our top athletes are worth absolutely every penny they get and I appreciate it’s not enough in many sports, particularly for the disabled. It’s just that the Nordic nations manage to spend on the elite AND on improving the health and capacity of the average citizen too. John Major could have done that. He might have started a transformation in sporting participation rates if he had matched the lottery cash for elite athletes to allow free entry to sports centres – or shifted the lot to subsidise childcare so good habits start young.

Scots have put up with being effectively excluded from affordable sport and affordable land for so long no one notices anymore. Instead we take great pride in producing some great Olympians and the world’s best spectators – the Tartan Army.

If we do nothing else in the wake of those stellar performances in Rio, we should start noticing.