UK SPORT will shortly unveil its new Lottery Strategy, outlining the investment plans for Olympic and Paralympic sports in the UK up until after the teams return from the Athens Games in 2004.
The move coincides with the announcement that the organisation’s awards to sport have passed through the £100 million barrier.
It may seem that Lottery funding has been a part of sporting life for a considerable period of time – but athletes only began to benefit from Lottery cash in mid-1997, leaving little time for the benefits to be felt by the time the Sydney Games arrived in 2000.
"This is the first time that we have publicly set out how we are investing the Lottery funds available to us and what we expect to see as a return on our investment", says Richard Callicott, UK Sport’s Chief Executive.
"Ultimately there will be no surprises for those who have already benefited from either the World Class Performance or Events Programmes – the overall direction is clear and sport continues to be involved in its evolution. The message from our own research and the independent Cunningham Review that followed was that World Class Performance is essentially working well, but that it needs to continue developing to make the money we invest work harder, ensuring that sports own their own programmes and that athletes are at the heart of it."
UK Sport exists to deliver sporting excellence and sees its Lottery-backed World Class Performance Programme as the main vehicle to deliver medals at major World, Olympic and Paralympic competitions The programme will benefit over 26 sports and around 670 athletes in the run-up to the Athens Games to the tune of some £25m per year.
Whilst the programme had seen £54m invested in Olympic sports and £9m in Paralympic sports prior to the Sydney Games, subsequent awards and commitments have seen this figure soar through the £100m mark. Lottery grants have benefited a diverse range of sports from athletics to bob-skeleton.
THE IMMEDIATE message from the 50-page document is that "investment will be focused on sports:
- That can clearly demonstrate likely medal success in the current Olympic and Paralympic cycles or that the 'gap to the podium' is bridgeable within a four-year period
- That have a track record of international success
- In which there is an appropriate level of governing body support for high-performance programmes
- In which investment is considered to represent value for money"
According to Callicott, with limited funds available for investment, World Class Performance needs to deliver value for money.
"UK Sport has been charged by the Government with responsibility for driving forwards high-performance sport in the UK and improving our standing in world sport," he explains. "Medal tables are the ultimate benchmarks of success and, therefore, World Class Performance is unashamedly about supporting potential medal winners.
"Team GB’s performances in Sydney were fantastic – but at the same time, they set new levels of expectation. This will make for an interesting period as we move towards Athens. We are not the only nation investing in our athletes and the sporting world is subject to continuous improvement, so the investment will help us keep pace with our leading competitors."
THE STRATEGY also sets high-level targets for the Athens Games – 10th as far as Team GB is concerned at the Olympics. The challenge that the Paralympic team will be asked to accept is to end the Games on top of the medal table.
The other main focus of the new Strategy is on UK Sport’s other main Lottery-backed initiative - the World Class Events Programme. A budget of £1.6m per annum will be set aside to support bidding and staging costs to help the UK’s sports bodies continue to attract major championships to the UK.
Since 1997, 70 World, European and Commonwealth events have been staged in the UK with the help of Lottery funding. This summer, of course, sees the Commonwealth Games come to Manchester.
The Strategy is now in its final consultation phase and will be available to the public shortly.