As decisions loom over funding of the road to Rio 2016 for Team GB, ‘minority’ sports are bracing themselves for severe funding cuts that they claim will destroy them.
Britain’s Olympic team sports face being “destroyed” when funding for the Rio Games is revealed later this month, it has been claimed. The amount of money handed out to volleyball, handball, hockey and bastketball is set to be drastically cut from its London high, a reduction that threatens to waste the progress made by sports in the build-up to this summer’s Olympic Games.
Leading figures in the sports expected to be worst hit will meet at the British Olympic Association’s HQ in London to explore their options on 10 December – eight days before UK Sport, the body that awards Lottery and Treasury money, announces funding levels for the Rio Olympic cycle. Team sports fear a “raw deal”.
UK Sport distributed over £264m for the London Olympics and another £50m for the Paralympics. A similar amount is available for “Project Rio”, although it is expected to be concentrated on fewer sports. UK Sport has already outlined its ambition of bettering Britain’s total of 65 London medals in 2016.
“It would destroy us,” said Richard Callicott, chair of British Volleyball and a former chief executive of UK Sport, of the expected cut. “It would knock us back to where we were before we started out on this journey to London. I’ve got between 30 and 40 players playing professionally in Europe now. That’s the progress we’ve made. We have got more coming through. It’s a loss of opportunity to capitalise on that original investment.”
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