Elite athlete investment on the up but is infrastructure still lacking?
An Olympic also-ran for many years, it is only recently that Team GB has started to invest in the country’s elite athletes.
Since Britain’s successful bid to hold the 2012 Olympic Games was announced a year ago, funding for sport at an elite level has been overhauled. UK Sport took over full responsibility to provide and administer funds from the government exchequer and National Lottery to world-class athletes, a pot of around £200 million. When Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced this finance package on 22nd March 2006, UK Sport immediately instigated a 100-day-plan, a strategy designed, according to UK Sport’s Matthew Crawcour: “to get that cash out to the sports straight away”. The plan, due to end on the 6th July to coincide with the bid’s first anniversary, can be viewed here.
Despite its apparent proactivity, UK Sport has been criticised by athletes (click here to be taken to the testimonials page) for only funding competitors with realistic medal hopes. Indeed, as one sports development officer said as part of this website’s survey: “Money should be increased to those with true potential, and not based on how well their sport has achieved medals.”
So does the future for Britain’s elite athletes looks rosy? It would seem so, but by UK Sport’s own prediction, this current funding package will only take Team GB to fourth in the medal table at best. In fact, Mr Brown decided to take the third cheapest funding option of the four presented to his department by UK Sport’s researchers. That said the ‘no compromise’ approach, as the funding package is also known, invests around £5 million per year more than athletes currently receive, with can only have a positive effect on performance.
It is outside of world-class sport that funding becomes confusing, complex and difficult to obtain. As this website reveals, funding for grass roots sport depends largely on where you live, and facilities funding outside of the £3.5 billion set aside for the building of the Olympic park and competition venues is non-existent. Please click the following links on the right-hand side of this page to be taken to the relevant pages.
