The government’s Sport Strategy consultation has asked for
views on high performance sport I would like to add some ideas about a change
in direction that might further increase our international success.
Some considerations:
- All teams sports except Hockey had high performance funding withdrawn after 2012
- Nearly 40% of GB medal winners in the last three Olympic Games have been public school educated yet under 6% of the school population is in public schools
- GB have not won a “strength” (Weight-lifting, Wrestling, Athletic Throws) medal for many Olympic cycles
- England Netball have received over the last number of four year cycles over £18 million for high performance and still stand as third in the world in the same top four as for the last 12 years.
- Hockey are now winning European medals after four continuous cycles of funding
- The talent pool of English performance coaches is regarded by many sports as poor
- The UK Sport “no compromise” approach to funding has successfully funded sporting success but does not allow for long term investment in major world sports
- For me high performance needs four elements;
- Well-funded and support fit athletes/players
- High quality coaches with high level technical and scientific support
- High quality facilities
- High level regular competition
So what needs to change? In some cases no a lot. The no compromise
approach to funding by UK Sport has been a great success for sports that are
generally individually based and in many cases a link between excellent aerobically
strong athletes with excellent scientific support and world leading technology.
I cannot and wouldn’t criticise the marginal gains approach of Sir Dave Brailsford
he is the other key component excellent single minded leadership. So that
approach should stay and continue to support the successful individually
sports.
However further consideration should be given to increasing the
success in team and strength sports. These need a different approach.
Hockey’s recent success of becoming European Champions has
been through strong leadership, mature coaching and a squad that spans at least
15+ years. All of the players have been through a long term cycle of support
where near certainty of funding has led to an ability to grow a system and adult squads
that can accommodate injury and still maintain a high standard.
Yet funding was withdrawn from other team’s sports just when
change was starting to make a difference. The difference with Olympic team
sports is the world plays them not just the Commonwealth! Over 200 national
teams entre qualifying competition for Football, Basketball, Volleyball (the
indoor game) and Handball. Compare this to cycling or rowing and they do not
appear to reach 100 countries entering. So government should think again about
a long term funding programme for team sports so we can compete at the highest
level consistently.
Alongside this investment should be made to improve the quality
of our best inter-club competition in those Olympic and potentially Commonwealth
team sports. This in the main shouldn’t be left to the governing bodies to run and
organise but could be a franchised regional operation based on the major urban
areas. The franchises should adopt the American model and equalisation to make
sure completion is regularly at a high level. Franchises should be funded
through government and other commercial sources. However the scale of these franchises
needs to be multiple sport covering Basketball, Volleyball, Handball and
potentially Netball. The Netball super-league is a model that could work for a
number of indoor team sports and by bringing four sports into one franchise the
economies and benefits of scale should enable the franchises to flourish.
To gain success at international level coaches are essential
and we have not developed enough quality English coaches who are able to commit
to coaching at the performance level. Some radical changes are needed to how we
develop coaches. UKCC has pushed coaches down a route of being great coaching
session coaches but not able to coach a game and learn and deal with instant
decision making that can positively change the game.
Very little cross sport
exchanges are entered into either. I made a point of watching the Netball at the Commonwealth
games last year and was tearing what little hair I have out at the way on three
occasions England appeared unable and unprepared to deal with the last two
minutes of a game.
Throwing away a potential gold medal game and then losing out in the Bronze medal game due to
in my view poor coach preparation. Apparently they practiced closing out the
game the day before for the first time. I learnt way back as a basketball coach
you need to practice the last two minutes running all possible scenarios for at least 20
minutes of every two hour in season training session. Just o example of where
cross sport cooperation could work. Sport Science should also play a part in generically
developing coaches. So we need to change the coaching system for coaches to
learn and experience coaching the game and not just coaching drills.
I would like to see a change to how we identify and
nurture athletes for the strength sports. Prior to the Olympic Games UK Sport
led a successful recruitment for tall people. Let’s try the same for strong
people and start to build hubs focused on strength and then guide athletes into
Weight-Lifting, Wrestling or field athletics. These are multi-medal Olympic
sports and we should be taking an approach similar to the Chinese in focusing
on these to move even further up the medal table.
This approach along with the investment in team sports should address the imbalance in the educational background of high performance
athletes. It is an accepted norm in participation sport that disproportionate funding leads to a re-dressing of the social imbalance so why not take this
same approach to performance athletes? “No compromise” is very effective but
for those who have not been able through financial, educational establishment or
family to get up the performance ladder. Yet many who are unable to fund
this journey methods should be identified to support those from middle and
working class homes to get into the performance funding process.
So the key messages for me are:
- Continue with “no-compromise” for individual sports
- Commit long term funding to Olympic team sports
- Develop multisport performance competition hubs on a franchise basis
- Invest in game based coach education programmes
- Encourage sports to engage in cross sport collaborations
- Identify a range of funding mechanisms to enable a broader base of athletes achieve international status
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