UK Sport Confirms Funding

 

UK Sport/EIS - 30.01.09

UK Sport has confirmed the remaining funding for eight Olympic and four Paralympic sports as well as details of additional funding that has been secured to underpin the investment. They bring the total invested in the World Class Performance Programme to £304 million, compared with the £265 million of public money for athletes competing in Beijing.

The announcement follows major funding decisions made in December, seeing £292 million invested as UK Sport confirmed its overall target as top four in the Olympic medals table and top two in the Paralympic in four years time. Due to a £50 million private sector shortfall in the investment in the London Olympiad, for the remaining 12 sports only £11.2 million of government and Lottery funding was available.

After committing to identify further funding, UK Sports’ efforts have already been rewarded with an agreement reached with the Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme (TASS), managed by SportsAid, which will see £1.8 million of its funds realigned to underpin UK Sport’s investment in these sports ahead of 2012. Positive talks are also taking place with regards to securing additional funding for high performance sport, with UK Sport working closely with LOCOG, the BOA, BPA, SCMS and Fast Track to develop an innovative proposal that will attractive to potential sponsors.

Sue Campbell, Chair of UK Sport said;
“We made a commitment back in December to do our utmost to identify additional funding for our Olympic and Paralympic sports. A huge amount of hard work has gone into this and I’m delighted this is already starting to bear fruit. There is a real desire within British sport to maximise the opportunity of a home Games, typified by the co-operation of SportsAid which will help underpin our investment in these 12 sports.

“Furthermore, we are in close talks with our partners in the high performance system to develop an innovative and exciting proposal for private sector sponsors. This will leave us well-placed to continue to build an effective sustainable world-class performance system, allowing our athletes to achieve success in 2012 and beyond.”

The figures announced by UK Sport include an option for each sport to ‘frontload’ their four-year award, making all of the investment available in 2009/10 and 2010/11. This maximizes the impact of each investment, albeit within a risk in terms of longer-term certainty. All sports can continue to progress with their World Class Performance Programmes until a review in 2011, where their progress will be assessed in performance terms relative to that in all other sports.

Campbell added;
“It was vital that, having successfully targeted our medal prospects, we also maximised the chances of every sport for London 2012 within our limited resources. While a risk, I believe that the flexible and performance orientated approach we have announced today does just that, with the potential two-year frontloading of the award giving everyone the chance to stay in the race. I would pay tribute to the sports involved for the approach they have taken, and we are committed to doing everything we can to continue to support their efforts.

“The past few months have not been easy for anyone, and the decisions we have taken have been tough. But I firmly believe we have done the best we can to deliver for all sports whilst remaining true to our core responsibility of driving medal success that was seen to deliver so well in Beijing.”

The English Institute of Sport will be working closely with sports to ensure they can offer the best sports science and sports medicine support services to fit their programmes in the run up to 2012.

Photography © Getty Images