Swimming funding is cut after dismal Olympic showing

 
Michael Jamieson, who won Olympic silver in the men's 200m breastroke, was one of the few successes in the pool for Team GB at London 2012
AP
19 December 2012

Most of Britain's Olympic and Paralympic sports were celebrating the announcement of funding rises for the next four years but several sports, including swimming, basketball, volleyball and handball, are paying the price for failure with severe cuts to their income.

UK Sport announced a record pot of £347m to be distributed in the run-up to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games with cycling, rowing, boxing, athletics and gymnastics among those given increases.

It is a different story for those sports that did not meet their performance targets in London including swimming, whose funding is cut to £21.4m from £25.1m, volleyball (down to £400,000 from £3.5m), plus basketball, handball, wrestling and table tennis, which miss out on funding altogether.

With Rebecca Adlington picking up two bronze medals and Michael Jamieson one silver, bosses at British Swimming had braced themselves for a drop in funding.

UK Sport's target is for Britain to be even more successful in Rio than in London, where the teams won 65 medals in the Olympics and 120 in the Paralympics.

The funding body's chief executive Liz Nicholl said: "We want to be the first nation in recent history to be more successful in the Olympics and Paralympics post-hosting."

UK Sport's chairman Sue Campbell admitted some sports would be devastated by the news.

She added however: "It isn't about being popular it's about making tough decisions about where public money goes."

The biggest increase of any Olympic sport goes to boxing, a 44% increase, to £13.8m, though £9.55m is conditional on sport sorting out some internal issues.

Cycling is up to £30.6m from £26.3m, athletics has a £1.7m increase to £26.8m, rowing up from £27.3m to £32.6m, and gymnastics up from £10.8m to £14.5m.

Investment in Paralympic sport also rises dramatically, up 43% on London 2012.

Nicholl added that swimming had been braced for bad news.

She said: "It won't be a surprise because we and they were disappointed that they didn't perform in London. They will get there.

"It's not a punishment - we don't punish.

"Today will be good news for some and it will be painful for others who haven't met the criteria.

"It's not been easy sharing these decisions with them today. They are very disappointed but I think some of these sports have to improve their base, their competition structure, and drive up competition before they can really compete for medals at a world level.

"We have been guided by our no-compromise approach.

"I hope the sports that have been hit today will go to sports like hockey and gymnastics and talk to them about how they have got back to where they are today.

"Hockey had their funding cut (in the past), they went bust, they were in dire straits and they have done amazingly well to recover."

David Sparkes, British Swimming CEO said: “Overall we are satisfied with the outcome. While disappointed with the award for swimming, we recognise we need to rebuild confidence that we can deliver medals at Olympic level consistently before we can demand more investment.

“We had a disappointing Olympics in swimming and we now need to focus our energies on driving the cultural change needed moving forward and this will be built around a no compromise approach underpinned by performance management and strong effective leadership.

“Everyone involved in swimming remains committed to working hard towards achieving success in Rio and beyond.”

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