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Interesting Article, do you think that Great Britain will be able to match its medal tally of last year in 2012? How much new talent is coming in, compared to sports men and women reaching the end of their career?

There are really good suggestions for those sports that were left out, but I am utterly disappointed at the suggestion that grassroots funding should be shifted to the elite teams.
The 2012 Olympics were obtained on the basis of 2 main arguments: 1. Increased participation at all levels in all communities and 2. Remarkable legacy.

With no grassroots there will be none of the above. However, you may argue that unless there is a team in the Olympics there won't be any interest on grassroots.

I believe that it is not the case.

Good article....
What are your thoughts on Cycling having its money increased by £4 million?
Personally i dont see why they need an increase.
1. The infrastructure and facilities are already now in place.
2. The haul in beijing is going to take some matching and I don't think its possbile to have nearly the same success.
3. Part of the Beijing success were the indivduals - you cant find too many Hoys, Wiggins, Romeroo's.

I would have preferred a decreased amount to Cycling and have that shared with the minority sports!

Shooting is NOT a sport and the participants are NOT athletes . Why should we fund ridiculous events like this ?

Beach volleyball, Taekwondo, Fencing and all the equestrian events should have the plug pulled on funding.
A gold medal in 10m air pistol is a worthless joke.

Give the money to real athletes.

To be honest, I have never much cared for beach volleyball and the debacle with the Russian and was it ... the Georgian teams at the last Olympics didn't help. Seemed to me it was an excuse to have a bunch of women running around in two-piece swim suits. Perhaps the cuts will help to focus the mind a little on actual sports as opposed to wishful thiking.

The whole issue of athlete funding is one frought with difficult balances, controversies and winners and losers.

I can sympathise with UK Sports decisions. Take things like Water Polo or Handball - with the greatest will in the world, these things are, and will remain, minority sports. The problem is, as team events, there are just 2 medals up for grabs in each sport. Its a huge risk to take funding dozens of athletes and coaches on the off chance of some success or recognition. That money could be used to instead further the funding of a dozen swimmers, who as individuals competing in perhaps 20 events between them, just have a better chance of success.

I know there should be other factors at play - promoting minority sports and ensuring representation. But whats really going to drive the grass roots and take-up of sport is success - not just representation. If that is the case, then UK Sport have taken the difficult, but justified position of focussing money where it has a higher probability of funding medals.

"English table tennis, for example, was recently given £9.3m to invest in grassroots projects. Might some of this money also help the elite too?"

Yes, lets take money from those kids, get them out on the streets, its free to join a gang...

What next? Take money from grass roots football, pump it back to the Premiership?

I thought the point of the Olympics was to encourage participation in sport, not suck all the money out of it!

Surely this is an arguement around what the country wants to be successful in. The amount of money that has been handed to swimming is scandalous! Given the amount of medals that have come from the pool in the last 3 olympics Adlington aside should give reason to a massive cut along with athletics. However, the mass majority would prefer to win a couple of medals in the prestiege events rather than challenge at the top of the medal table with medals from shooting ect. Cycling and Rowing are great examples of NGB's that have put a winning system in place and spend money on winners. Not on people whos aim is to get into semi finals and finals.

Until NGB focus their elite programmes on winners and the general public shift their attention from the glamor sports smaller governing bodies will have to rely on handouts and scraps.

Shooting is NOT a sport and the participants are NOT athletes . Why should we fund ridiculous events like this ?

A gold medal in 10m air pistol is a worthless joke.

Give the money to real athletes.

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So fatClyde, what factual evidence do you have to substantiate your assertions? Been an international shooter have you? Understand the physical, technical, tactical and mental demands of the sport? How do they differ from say, Golf?

Or are you just another opinionated bigot pontificating about something you know nothing about?

Anyone who has actually competed at a high level in ANY sport knows the hours of dedicated work that go into it, not to mention the huge amount of funding. Suggestions that trips to contests can be cut out of programmes is at best ill advised, medals are often almost decided in the pre-games events and just re-run for show at the main event. For too many years British athletes particularly in the 'minority' sports have suffered at the hands of the spoiled brats of athletics and swimming. Swimming does not include it's minority disciplines, despite it's assertions to the contrary.
Look at what will happen to the games facilities, there will be NO legacy. Look at facilities around the country, any kids who get the buzz will rapidly lose it when they find they cant have a go locally.
My kid saw Tom Daley(diving) said can I try, no diving boards available let alone coaches for a 50+ mile radius and we live almost on top of the NGB for swimming, who are supposed to run their 'minority' sports. How many others will go this way.

Trouble is the Government has probably said they need some of the funding that goes towards these "minority" sports (accept those who take part in Shooting and Table tennis work just as hard as those in Cycling/Swimming etc) to fund the actual London Olympics so we can actually get the games ready on time!

I can see the arguing for why do cycling and rowing need more money when they are successful enough but then its like that in football and the Premiership ofcourse with the big clubs getting the most money etc.

Ofcourse to an outsider like me an Olympic medal could be more worthy in some sports than others but remember a winner has had to work hard no matter what their chosen sports are.

pretty confident that if u take up a sport that requires u to buy a horse, then u can afford to look after it, plus what mental demands are there for shooting something? U can even argue it promotes violence, i don't agree, but just a thought if uwanna be that perdantic.

let's face it, there isn't any factual evidence to substantiate these assertions, as they're just people's opinoins.

Although i will say that more people compete in athletics than at shooting FACT

Hi Matt,
Intersting your reply about a5255b's comment re his son.
I got involved last year in a discussion about diving facilities in the Uk and pointed out to the governing body (ASA), Sport England and the Gov't that we had lost over 75% in the last 30 years and the numbers were still declining.
I was told that:
a. I was taking Rubbish and my figures were wrong
b, it didn't matter because of the programmes in place and we were doing great
c. That there were more than 100 more pools than I was claiming.

Turns out, once the debate had been stifled by the official figures that we were right all along and the ASA eventually admitted that the 'official' figures of over 170 accessible facilities should actually have been around 76....
Whole swathes of the country hve no facilities for diving - Birmingham for instance has no diving board!
London will have lost facilities by the time 2012 arrives, and it already has lost over 90% of those that were there when I started in the sport.
Funding is only going to two areas, the elite (fine) and layers of management which we could do without.
You can't get on a teacher course to teach the sport and if you do, you can only qualify if you live near an active centre.
The NGB's have too much power and are not answerable in any meaningful way.
The whole structure is rotten from top to bottom and conspires against anyone who wants to change anything.
What 2012 will give us is, sadly, a very well expensed management process, a few elite centres and athlete and nowhere for the majority of kids to actually try a sport.

My worry (as a5255b bought up) is that kids WILL be enthused and want to try these differenent sports that would get them involved, but, that there will be nowhere for them to do it!

There should be potentially 10 Tom Daleys in Birmingham, but there is no way we will ever find out!

Thanks for the response Matt.
You have a little more faith in the way things work than I do!

If Tom Does well, we will get what we have had before which is the 'Look how well we are doing, we don't need any more expensive facilities" (we are getting this already!)

But looking at other sports, what many forget is that, pre lottery there was a degree of money provided anyway to sport, lottery however not only increased the money available, but also removed the minimum amount that all sport got.

Some sports did very well out of it, some lost almost altogether and the government got away with saving money without a whimper!

One of the problems we are going to get is the idea of doing away with 'local' facilities and the concentration on a small number of regional ones. This is happening already and a huge number of swimming pools are going, being replaced a by a small number of PFI funded centres (look at Rotherham) which makes for good quality facilities but decreases accessibility.

I supported wholeheartedly the bid for 2012 as I saw it as a once only opportunity to get this generation active and to redress the balance for sports infrastructure in and around London. I sincerely hope it does, but in London, in my sport, it will not be allowed to have the major effect it should have as there is not the infrastructure in place to allow it to happen. Cart and Horse.....

One final comment Matt about the question you pose in your reply.
Part of the answer is for the media to actually hold the NGB's and Sport England and the DCMS to account.

I believe that many reporters actually do just take what these august bodies state at face value and very very rarely delve any deeper into what they are told.

The ASA actually lied to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ in their statement and made comments that were as blatantly untrue to the Telegraph, but no one was prepared to actually hold them to account! If they know they can get away with it, they will. There might be a brief rucus, but the NGB's and the rest know that it will only last for a little while and then the fuss will die down.

Most sport NGB are not answerable in a democratic manner to their membership. The members know things are wrong but have no real power to make changes. and as Sport England just ask the NGB's to tell them if they are doing a good job with their money........

This is the problem, they know they can get away with anything they want really, and do.

I KNOW that consultants are briefed against diving facilities for public use, but the NGB say they are not so that's that! I get the impression that other sports suffer the same as we do. But if they get lottery funding from the NGB no one dare be critical otherwise the funding might disappear.

I've seen some of the stuff in the press that this guy is talking about and it is clear from personal digging that the NGB's in this case swimming, robustly supported by the specific government department are so far up each other, that the lay person doesn't have a prayer of sorting out truth from fiction, and diving facilities in London is a great place to start. DCMS actually gave incorrect information in the 'House' because it relied on information from NGBs.
Yet in particular this same NGB sat on vast sums of it's own money pre-lottery and invested very little on it's elite sports especially the minority ones, and now it sits at the high table and is getting grants to run it's talent ID, its education programmes, it's elite programmes and is growing it'sarray of managers like they're going out of style. It would be interesting to have these people actually called to account for every penny spent in a clear and open way, so we can really see what return on investment we are getting.

Whoever it is that thinks Shooting is not a sport is clearly misinformed.
Just because its a static sport does not mean you do not have to train just as hard.
To stand still and concentrate for upto two hours is an extremely difficult achievement. You need to be very fit mentally and the only way you can achieve this is to be very physically fit. These "Athletes" spend more time training away from the range than they do on the range. Do not judge any sport until you know exactly whats involved.
The comment made on this blog is an insult to those who are working very hard to get to 2012 and beyond.

Although the ´óÏó´«Ã½ shouldn't be funding these sports, they can help by giving the Olympic sports the exposure they require on terrestrial TV to attract sponsorship.

However, as the ´óÏó´«Ã½ are even snubbing the most successful British sports team in recent history by not showing the World Cup Cycling (it's four events a year - not exactly something they couldn't accommodate!), what hope have the rest got?


Long term the ´óÏó´«Ã½ giving more exposure to Olympic sports (other than athletics) should attract more sponsorship to the sports, which in turn brings more success to the sports, which ultimately increases the interest once we get to London 2012, and therefore increases the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s ratings too.

But no, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ would much rather show a footy game from Milan featuring some British ex-pat.