Britains Olympic Funding Slashed

Article by Donald McRae taking in full from our friends at The Guardian


At least half of Britain's Olympic sports could have their funding slashed if the government spending review in the autumn delivers another budget tightening before the 2012 London Games.

Peter Keen, the director of performance at UK Sport and the person charged with bettering Britain's record fourth place in the medals table at the Beijing Olympics, told the Guardian he would be willing to divert money from 50% of the country's sporting bodies to athletes who have a more realistic chance of reaching the podium.

"Like all publicly funded organisations we'll soon hear our budget," Keen said. "You must remember that our London mission was funded by a dramatic increase in exchequer funding, not lottery funding. But we're dependent on exchequer funding that will be determined in the autumn.

"We're £50m down on the original budget we had in 2006. It was a £600m investment and it's a shame we don't have that now. But it's more important to focus on our mindset rather than the money. With any reasonable budget we will give the backing those [prospective medal-winning] athletes deserve. And so if that means we can only fund half the sports then that's all we can do. What we really don't want to do is dilute our commitment to excellence."

Keen said sports with a reasonable chance of winning medals – among them cycling, athletics, rowing, sailing and swimming – could become the sole priority.

"My ultimate loyalty is to elite sport. I learned early on that if you compromise, if you don't look the monster in the eye, you invariably fail. If you distribute money to the point where you are spreading it so thinly then you're not recognising a key point: that to do it properly does cost. There are no shortcuts for our rowers and sailors and swimmers. They often travel the world more than 100 days a year. Somebody has to pay to allow them to compete in these world events. Our whole rationale about how we award funding is built on that fundamental insight."

In 2004, soon after he began his current role at UK Sport, Keen adopted a ruthless funding procedure to make the most pragmatic use of lottery money. Sports with mediocre results were shocked that large chunks of their funding were diverted to performers who had a realistic chance of winning medals in Beijing.

Keen was praised widely after Great Britain finished fourth in the medals tables in Beijing. In the jubilant aftermath, the British Olympic Association announced that it was realistic to target third place in 2012. That optimism has since been downgraded.

Keen conceded that there are doubts the "high watermark" of Beijing will be reached again, but he also claimed that "the evidence would suggest that our aspiration to be fourth, and to win more medals in more sports, is absolutely on course. Is it tight? Yes. It is challenging? Yes. Is it doable? Absolutely."

Keen urged both the government and the public to remember the value of Olympic success – especially in London. "Two years from the Olympics is the right time to ask everybody searching questions that go beyond the issue of money. These are questions for us as a nation. Do we want to win – yes or no? How much are we prepared to invest in that? Why do we do it? It starts with notions of nationhood. I think that matters because we care about sport as a nation … Short of economic domination and warfare, I'm not sure what else makes sense of our national identity and our hopes to succeed as a country."