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Amy Williams
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In response to a number of media enquiries British Skeleton would like to answer a number of questions regarding the growth and success of the sport over the past eight years and our vision on to 2014.

Over the past eight years British Skeleton has successfully grown from a fledgling Olympic sport in the UK and delivered a World Class structure and performance pathway for athlete development. Our programmes have consistently produced a pipeline of talent capable of representing Great Britain at all levels of international competitions. In fact, 13 different British athletes have won a total of 76 medals on the world stage in the last four seasons.

This programme has clearly demonstrated that systematic talent identification and development of the right athletes with proper funding, high quality coaching, a professional management structure, and investment in technical innovation, a traditionally non-winter sport nation can be a world leader.

Prior to competition we would like to recognise the important contribution that our funders and partners have given the performance programme. The sport has received £2.1 million core Lottery funding from UK Sport between 2006-10. In addition, The Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme (TASS) have been the major supporter of British Skeleton’s talent and development squad athletes over the past six years. UK Sport has also invested significant funding in our Skeleton Futures talent identification and development programme in the last two years. Research and innovation of cutting edge equipment and preparation techniques has been provided by UK Sport's innovation team, high quality sports science and medicine services have been delivered through core funded English Institute of Sport practitioners. This funding has allowed British Skeleton to gradually evolve its performance pathway and athlete development programmes since their inception in 2000.

We have also received clothing and equipment from Adidas and Tesa (tape). The University of Bath has provided excellent facilities including the push start track crucial to summer time preparation. While some athletes choose to opt out of some services the overall success of the programme is clear with 76 medals won by 13 different Pathway Programme Athletes between 2006 and 2010.

This stability of funding in the past four years has meant that our top World Cup athletes have each received Athlete Personal Awards (APAs) which this year amount to between £18k - £27k of Lottery funding per annum, and over four years equate to between £70,000 to £94,000 per athlete, depending on results and achievement of their annual performance targets. These allowances have provided them with funding for living and personal training expenses, and give them the freedom to train full time and to be totally committed to the programme.

The World Cup squad is the pinnacle of the programme and has received over  £114,000 per athlete over the four years (£30,000 per athlete 2009/10) in core funding to support their training, travel and competition on the World Cup circuit, at World and European championships. This excludes all administration and performance management costs.

As performance standards continue to rise we believe we can deliver a truly world class performance programme which is focused on success.

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The programme has also supported the British teams on both the InterContinental /Europa / Americas Cup series. Maintaining these programmes has not been easy at times and reductions have been needed to cope with dramatic foreign exchange movements; which caused costs to increase by £50,000 in four months.

All these results could not have been achieved without the total dedication, commitment and skill of the athletes, supported by the highly professional coaching team led by Performance Director Andi Schmid and it is from these foundations we look forward the sport developing even further going from strength to strength towards 2014!

The 2006 to 2010 campaign maybe at an end shortly, but for British Skeleton the programme continues with our six Skeleton Futures Talent Squad continuing their training with camps in Igls, Austria and then three weeks in Lake Placid, USA before the season is over. They will then be on the path to join the current 12 athletes on the World Cup and Inter Continental Cup circuits to achieve international success for Great Britain. As performance standards continue to rise we believe we can deliver a truly world class performance programme which is focused on success.

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