Top competitors in Britain will be receiving more money to fuel their Olympic dreams approaching Rio after Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbor announced a 29 per cent budget increase for UK sport.
Following the major announcement Osbor stated, “We’re going for gold in Rio and Toyo.”
UK sport, which funds elite athletes and receives roughly £45 billion per year from the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport, was expecting potential cuts to the budget rather than the increase according to The Times.
The increase will largely benefit Britain’s elite competitors including those that train in the pool.
Over the last two years swimming has climbed the ladder of British sports in terms of the high level of performance.
At last summer’s World Championships in Kazan, Russia, five British athletes managed to win an individual medal which included both Adam Peaty and James Guy taking home two individual medals each.
Along with the individual performances, Britain took home two relay medals as well; both gold.
British Swimming Chief Executive David Sparkes warmly welcomed the increase in funding,“we agree strongly with the Chancellor that sport provides a massive return on investment to the nation and we are committed to that cause as we near the pinnacle of the Rio 2016 cycle while continuing to work hard towards Tokyo 2020.”
British Swimming is the governing body for swimming, diving, synchronized swimming, water polo, and open water swimming in Britain.
Sparkes hopes that the funding will not only help pool swimmers, but will be beneficial to the synchro athletes as well.
“We hope today’s commitment will assist as we try to secure a return to funding for our synchronized swimming program,” Sparkes said. “Currently we’re working towards an initial bid for funding for Rio 2016 but we have a longer-term aim to see the previously successful synchro program integrated once again into UK Sport’s World Class stable.”
Currently UK Sport provides funding for diving, and swimming, but not synchro.
Well, nobody expected this post-Olympics. Funding has been battered previously but this is a huge rise. UK government viewing our sporting results as a political status? I think so.
This is great but would be even better if some of this funding could go towards GB deaf swimmers. They work just as hard as mainstream swimmers, some of them win more medals for their country than mainstream swimmers & they do not get the recognition they so obviously deserve. Take World & European champion swimmer Danielle Joyce, who is an exceptional athlete. She receives no funding whatsoever. Tell me how can this be fair. It is not. Sports funding should be looked at again & shared more fairly between ALL elite GB athletes.
You could try emailing the people who run the website rather than posting it in a comment thread…
Sorry if I have ruined your day…. 🙄
I post it here so that as many people as possible can read it and maybe, by chance or by miracle, one of them has had the same problem and has succeeded in fixing it.
Hi bobo, we haven’t heard of this issue from anyone else. Our tech guy is happy to help you fix the issue, if you can email him davis@SwimSwam.com, he can troubleshoot. Thanks!
Good for the British athletes.
100% off topic but very important for me.
Not the first time I talk about that here but I have never fixed the problem so far.
So I try again because that’s very unbearable.
And sorry for the lack of technical vocabulary.
For about one year now, EVERY TIME I go to the swimswam website, my computer becomes crazy.
I click on an article to read it. Everything is blocked during 2 or 3 minutes. And I receive the following message: “Google Chrome doesn’t answer.” And then it’s back to normal. But it can happen again at any moment.
And I have that problem ONLY on swimswam.
I’ve… Read more »
turn off then on.
move the book case and check connections.
reload windows.
where can I pick up my cheque? 🙂
I sent you an email. If you follow up, I can help you get it working!