Excellence under pressure

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Rodney Walker, head of UK Sport, worries that the vagaries of lottery funding make it a poor basis from which to secure a record Olympics medal haul

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Sport is now front- and back-page news. After the successful Sydney Olympics and the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, sport has risen up the public and government agendas. The decision to bid for London to host the 2012 summer Olympics has seen that stock rise even further. It has generated huge debate and excitement and put the industry under the microscope as never before.

Athletes, too, are under pressure with just 12 months of the four-year Olympic cycle remaining before competition starts in Athens on 14 August 2004.

Being at the top of the agenda brings its own challenges. Sport in this country has often been accused of being fractious and underachieving. But a new culture has been evolving, with lottery investment at its core.

Our objectives
UK Sport’s objective is for the UK to be in the world’s top five sporting nations by 2012, winning a significant share of medals at the world’s biggest sporting events. Our World Class Performance Programme is unashamedly about the pursuit of success. Alongside our support for events, we invest lottery funds in sports of significance, notably the Olympic and Paralympic disciplines, and in individuals who have the potential to win medals now or in the foreseeable future.

The Olympic focus provides athletes and coaches with a clear four-year cycle to develop and evolve, competing in World, Commonwealth, European and National championships along the way. And nothing captures the public’s imagination like an Olympic Games. I’m sure everyone can remember where they were when Sir Steve Redgrave won his historic fifth gold in Sydney. Who can forget the last gasp victory of Rhona Cameron in the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics curling?

While the athletes themselves are under pressure to produce the right performance on the right day, so it is our responsibility to ensure the best structure and support is in place for them to achieve that goal.

For the four-year period following Sydney, UK Sport has budgeted approximately £25m annually to support World Class Performance. The money has been invested in quality coaching, sports science and medicine and state of the art technology. Selected athletes also receive money directly to enable them to balance their finances while training full time, covering transport costs, equipment, gym membership and contributions towards living costs. This has been complemented by the network of lottery-funded sports institutes in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and the Exchequer-funded services of the UK Sports Institute. 

The pressures
All this is under pressure from the decline in lottery receipts faced by lottery distributors across the board. Steps have been taken to rectify the fall in Lotto ticket sales and breathe new life into the game but so far with limited success. The Olympic 2012 bid could act as a huge fillip to the game overall as well as raising money for the Games, but this is unlikely to come on-stream for up to two years. As a result of declining ticket sales, UK Sport faces the prospect that its income in March 2005 will be half the current £25m, as the 9.2% UK Sport receives of sport’s lottery share (itself 16.7% of the lottery total) is sliced more thinly. Given that UK Sport receives a proportionally small share of the lottery pot, and all our programmes are revenue-based with long-term commitments, this kind of drop in income has a major impact.

To operate within defined boundaries hurts when times are tough. But the family of sport are often asked to support each other financially in such times without account being taken of the priorities each agency is trying to deliver. Government has stepped in recently to ensure funding levels are maintained in the vital final months leading up to the Athens Olympics, blurring further the distinction between lottery and Exchequer funds.

But like any successful team, the sports council family needs harmony, trust and transparency and the prospect of diverting money from participation sport to meet the shortfall in our World Class Performance Programme does little to foster the good relations on which we depend. Each end of the spectrum should be allowed to flourish to deliver the very real benefits to society that sport can bring.

Our position is obviously different from those of the other distributors. Our commitments always outstrip income because we fund on a four-year basis. As our income is falling short of our commitments, we have become reliant on the government and our own contributions to make up the shortfall. These funding constraints provide an inauspicious backdrop for preparations ahead of next year’s Olympic Games – in which expectations are running high. Sydney was our most successful Olympic Games since Antwerp in 1920 with Great Britain’s athletes winning 28 medals: 11 gold, 10 silver and 7 bronze. It was the first Olympic Games in which the impact of lottery investment could be seen and our athletes readily acknowledged the support they received. It was in this climate of success that the government pledged that funding to athletes would not drop below pre-2000 levels. This allowed UK Sport to make long-term (four-year) budgeting decisions, providing stability and reassurance to the sports we work with. It is therefore disconcerting at a time when sport’s profile is higher than ever, that our income is expected to fall sharply –especially given the government’s backing of the London 2012 bid and the importance of continuity to the elite sport community.

Compared with other lottery distributors, the success of our investment can be determined by the tiniest of margins. The difference between winning and losing is a split second, a stumble, a millimetre, a gust of wind. Whilst we will do what we can to support our athletes in the quest to bring home medals, we are anxious that expectations are realistic, conscious that performance is measured on the day and that, for all our efforts, this is a new system, the fruits of which cannot truly be realised at least until Beijing in 2008.

The challenges ahead
Decisions will be made later this year about the financing and delivery of the World Class Programmes for the Beijing Olympiad. Cuts present UK Sport with difficult challenges, as they would any distributor. Should we reduce the number of athletes who receive lottery support and focus our energies on only those in, for example, the top ten of their respective sports? What impact will this have on our medal performance where, with fewer competitors, we will be even more vulnerable to the prospect of injuries or others outperforming us? And what will happen to those just emerging as talented individuals? It is often at these formative stages that the most support is needed. The best athletes need the best coaches and any uncertainty in the long-term future could see our leading coaches and performance directors seeking new, more secure challenges abroad.

We owe it to the athletes, coaches and supporters of sport to ensure we make the most of this opportunity because without secure, stable funding the UK could face relegation on the track and on the international stage. And no one likes to lose.

Sir Rodney Walker is Chairman of UK Sport