UK Sport

UK Sport Supporting Six World Championships in 2008

Mairi Irvine 25 March 2008

Home advantage for British athletes will be given a major boost this year thanks to the number of world events being held in the UK. UK Sport is supporting a total of 14 international events in 2008 through its ambitious National Lottery backed World Class Events Programme, including a record six World Championships.

The first of these world championships start on Wednesday 26 March, with the World Track Cycling Championships being staged in Manchester. The GB Cycling team – backed by UK Sport’s World Class Performance Programme - will be defending seven world titles at an event supported by up to £275,000 of National Lottery funds. This follows on from cycling’s extremely successful World Cup Track Classic in Manchester last year, where British athletes demonstrated the advantage of competing on home soil by winning an outstanding 15 medals.

UK Sport’s Senior Events Consultant, Martin Morton, said: “We are tremendously proud of our role in bringing this world championship to the UK once again. This is the fifth consecutive year that the World Class Events Programme has assisted in bringing top class international cycling competition to the Manchester Velodrome, and highlights our serious commitment to the sport.”

Later in the week the World Cross Country Championships are being hosted in the picturesque setting of Holyrood Park in Edinburgh, home of the European Cross Country Championships in 2003. This weekend also sees World Cup Modern Pentathlon action at Millfield School, Somerset.

The FINA World Swimming Championships (25m), the second of three World Championships to be held in Manchester in 2008, will take place in April, supported by £950,000 of National Lottery funds. The five day event is set to be the biggest ever, with over 130 countries confirming their entry. As well as being the first World Swimming Championship of its kind to be staged in the UK, it will also be the first music and entertainment venue to host competitive swimming, as two temporary pools have been built in the Manchester Evening News Arena. The venue has been transformed allowing innovative sports presentation along with sound and lighting you would expect from a world class show. Later in the year world championship action also takes place in rugby union, squash and beach volleyball.

“UK Sport is supporting 14 events this year, with a further two in the pipeline,” Morton said. “This equates to a total investment of £3.3 million pounds of National Lottery money per annum in top sporting events across the UK. But the programme is not just about investing money, it is also about bringing partnerships together to leverage support for events. Additionally, the programme seeks opportunities for capacity building and knowledge transfer to ensure that the UK has the right quantity and quality of personnel required to deliver successful Games in both London in 2012 and two years later in Glasgow.”

UK Sport’s World Class Events Programme has been in operation since 1997 and has brought over 100 world class sporting events to the UK. With London 2012 on the horizon, the programme has expanded and has seen a doubling of its funds in recent years, meaning that the UK is now in the enviable position of targeting many strategically important events in the run up to 2012 and beyond.

Morton continues:

“Our investment in events comes after deliberate and careful strategic planning with the UK’s national governing bodies of sport. There is no better way for sports to prepare for the challenge of 2012 and 2014 than to host significant events here in the UK. As the strategic lead in co-ordinating the UK’s efforts to bid for and stage major events we are able to bring together a range of partners, including cities and regional and national development agencies, as well as the sports themselves to determine event priorities.”

In addition to the World Championships, UK Sport is also supporting at least eight other top international competitions, including the Paralympic World Cup, now firmly established as the global annual centrepiece for elite athletes with a disability.

“This is an extremely exciting year for the programme, with many British athletes being given the opportunity to test themselves at European or World level on home soil before the Olympics and Paralympics later in the year,” said Morton.

The range of the programme is also demonstrated with support for sports such as wrestling for the first time, as Sheffield looks forward to hosting the GB Cup in June.

In 2008, the WCEP will support/has supported the following events: