POSTED: January 30th 2009

NewsUpdate

Cash cutbacks hit Team GB

KEIR RADNEDGE / Sports Features Communications

LONDON, Jan 30: The chill of the global economic crisis has touched the British Olympic movement with eight sports seeing their financial support cut ahead of London 2012 after a £50m budget shortfall.This has raised the spectre that the BOA may not, as it had promised, be able to field entries in every sport in the next summer Games.

The cuts see shooting's allocation reduced by £3.84m, forcing a move from 46 funded athletes to 10.

Worse affected is water polo which has suffered a 50pc cut to £1.45m which could cost the sport all participation. Performance director Nick Hume said: "It's looking pretty bleak. We think the absolute cheapest you could do it on would be about £2.5m. That would get two decent teams to London but only on a real shoestring."

UK Sport has tried to allieviate the effect of the cuts by promising sports the cash up front rather than split annually during the four-year cycle up to 2013. It also hopes to raise cash from the private sector though the Government's failure to achieve this is a significant cause of the cutbacks.

Sue Campbell, chair of UK Sport, said: "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. 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."

The  £11.2m of public money remaining after funding allocations to the 'main' sports is being split between fencing, handball, shooting, table tennis, volleyball/beach volleyball, water polo, weightlifting and wrestling. Four Paralympic sports - fencing, goalball, volleyball and wheelchair basketball (women) - will also rceive less than anticipated.

Andy Burnham, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport remained hopeful that private funding would become available. He said: "There is an unprecedented level of public investment - more than £300m - going into the London cycle, and this will be supplemented by a new private sector funding stream which will be a permanent legacy of the Games.

"We are entering a new phase of this work, in partnership with UK Sport, Locog, the British Olympic Association [BOA], the British Paralympic Association [BPA] and Fast Track, and hope to finalise proposals shortly. We encourage businesses to support our athletes as they prepare for medal success."

BOA chief executive Andy Hunt said: "The BOA is disappointed that eight of the Olympic sports cannot be fully funded through to the London 2012 Olympic Games at this time. However, the BOA is working together with UK Sport, Locog, BPA and DCMS to find a solution to the problem."

Keywords · British Olympic Association · London 2012 · UK Sport

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