The U.K. government has warned that the "high cost of funding sporting success" is "at odds with the current financial climate" and announced that it will
"review the way that elite sport is financed amid fears that Britain's top
athletes will lose their backing," according to Sam Dean of the LONDON TIMES. U.K. Sports Minister Tracey Crouch has announced that a nine-week public
consultation "will be followed by a new national strategy that will examine
how much money is being spent" on Britain's elite athletes in the pursuit of
Olympic and Paralympic Medals. The new plan "will also attempt to reverse the decline in sports participation
levels," which remain higher than they were in '05, but have "steadily fallen" since the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The consultation comes after Crouch said in June that she would "rip up" the "severely outdated" existing strategy, which was launched three years ago. She said on Tuesday that the investment into Britain's elite athletes "needs to
continue," but the consultation document warns that the cost of competing at
the top level "has increased significantly" and it now appears likely that
sports that fail to reach their performance targets will "have to face a cut
in their funding" (LONDON TIMES, 8/5). In London, David Kent reported the consultation document said, "The most pressing question for Olympic and Paralympic sport after Rio 2016 is how to sustain our success without the costs continuing to escalate to a point where they are unsustainable to be supported from the public purse." The British team "must improve on the 65 Olympic and 120 Paralympic medals won in London -- a feat never before achieved by a nation following a home Games." UK Sport CEO Liz Nicholl said, "It's not probable, but it is possible. If it was easy then other host nations would have done it in the past" (DAILY MAIL, 8/4). In London, Ben Rumsby reported UK Sport insisted it remained its "aspiration" for the nation to "become
the first in recent history to improve on its haul from a home Games." Nicholl: "We are not downplaying expectations. It's always been the
case coming through London that it was very clear there was an appetite
for aiming to do what no host nation has done before." UK Sport will not announce "formal medal targets for Rio until around a month before the Games." Nicholl said, "After this summer's results, we will review the realistic medal targets and announce the actual target in the month leading into the Games" (TELEGRAPH, 8/5).
