Future Olympic glory at risk due to lack of investment, warns Team GB head
Shortage of infrastructure funding has left Britain ‘behind the curve’ compared with rivals, says Andy Anson
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Team GB, which includes athletes from across the UK, has established itself near the top of the Olympic medal tables in recent summer Games. In Tokyo three years ago, the UK bagged 64 medals, only slightly below the 67 secured in Rio in 2016 and the 65 in London in 2012.
The British team is bullish about its prospects this summer, targeting between 50 and 70 medals when the Olympic Games kick off in Paris on July 26. However, Andy Anson, BOA chief executive, said spending on sports facilities up and down the country had dropped well below what was required to develop the next generation of young medal winners, and urged the new government to take action.
“We do amazingly well given the lack of investments in our sporting infrastructure,” he told the Financial Times. “The question is: is it sustainable? My worry is, longer term, that the performance starts to decline if we don’t properly fund these athletes.” He said British athletes had so far managed to keep up, largely because much of the money available had been funnelled to elite programmes, but that sporting bodies were already talking about cutting the number of athletes they developed due to a shortfall in funding.
Anson said maintaining the recent level of performance and the breadth of the talent pool would require a significant improvement in the quality and quantity of training facilities across the country.
“One of the things we would urge the new government to do is really start to re-embrace the Olympic sports again because they do have a very positive effect in terms of bringing the country together, and also in terms of getting a broad range of young people into playing sports,” he said. Anson, who is also chair of Lancashire Cricket Club, former European chief of the men’s international tennis tour and an ex-director of Manchester United football club, pointed to the level of investments made by towns and regions in France to build “incredible” swimming pools, football pitches, skate parks and running tracks. “When you see what France has got in terms of sports infrastructure it’s amazing,” he said. “We would like to think we can move the dial on this because I think we’re behind the curve.”
Inflation has also made it harder for sporting bodies to stick to their spending plans.
UK Sport, the government agency that invests in British Olympic and Paralympic programmes, said in January that its funding would need to increase by 20 per cent just to keep up with rising prices.
The amount distributed by UK Sport to Olympic sports ahead of the Paris Games has risen less than 5 per cent since London 2012, although funding for Paralympic programmes has doubled. “The broader system can’t let that deteriorate. I think it’s been one of the great success stories of British sport, and actually, more than that, of British culture,” said Anson. UK Sport draws on money from central government and the National Lottery, which also gives money to grassroots sports initiatives.
The next funding round for the cycle ending at the Los Angeles Games in 2028 is yet to be agreed but is likely to be included in the first spending review conducted by the new Labour government. The current financing agreement runs until March next year. Team GB itself is funded through commercial partnerships with sponsors including high street bank NatWest, supermarket chain Aldi and peanut butter brand Whole Earth. Its recent accounts showed that sponsorship income rose from £9.4mn in 2022 to £13.6mn last year.
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