Should the government fund elite sport?

A snowHead

rob@rar, phew! that's a relief Toofy Grin

A snowHead

Interesting to see how this thread has developed into a genuinely interesting argument ( Dr John's comment aside).

It started as a fairly trenchant argument between me and weluvstatefunding but has evolved nicely. I don't think we have seen anyone who is not a competitor or instructor say they are in favour of state funding of elite freestyle skiers yet?

Two philosophical issues remain for me:

1) Whether some sports (skiing, cycling, kayaking) have such a disconnect between those who race/compete and the average recreational participants that it is almost meaningless to regard the recreational/elite sport aspects as being related at all?

2) Whether there are some sports - freestyle skiing/snowboarding, MTB Trials, Free Climbing, Surfing etc etc - which have an ethos and an image which is incompatible with state funding and dependence, and there are some (Track Cycling, Slalom/DH etc etc) which fit more?

I'd prefer to continue my funding of snowsports by occasional discretionary payments to deserving individuals, rather than money thrown at inefficient squabbling UK organisations, and also by buying gear and products sponsoring skiers I admire.

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stoatsbrother, You seem to suggest that there is more of a disconnect between recreational snowsports and racing than there is between the type of cycle racing that you do and leisure cycling.

How do you explain needing to chase people out of race courses ? There were several times this season when I looked uphill while setting a course and there was a punter turning round each gate.

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After all it is free

PJSki, Why should football be special, there is an indoor football centre next to Chill Factore, both are commercial operations and have a similar sized carpark.

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rjs, thats a few lost sheep. And we get dog-walkers on our MTB racetrack. So what?

I could easily point to the empty public-use NASTAR courses I see in the US - a nation which actually is good at skiing.

Show me some numbers to prove I am wrong that racing is irrelevant for the huge majority of to 1.5 million recreational UK snowusers - rather than one anecdote?

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You know it makes sense.

PJSki, Oh no! Not an Alpine skiing nation closing off a piste to hold a race in their own country when you want to ski! Whatever next. Perhaps if you tell them that you are British/American? they will cancell the race so you can have your leasurly ski down!
What a load of tosh you do say some times!
The race teams pay an absolute forune to hire those pistes so they can do training safely without puinters like you straying onto them. If the resort thought it would not be economical or be any benefit to them they wouldn't do it! Get real!

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A snowHead

brian

Skimming the last couple of pages it seems that the general assumption is that public money funds elite sport to increase grass roots participation via inspiration. This might be partially true but I think a bigger/the real motivation is to win medals in order to promote patriotism/national feel good factor/a warm glow for political leaders to bask in and a good photo-op at the palace. Are we really aiming for a nation full of skeleton bobbers?

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gryphea, the difference is that it is almost impossible to play tennis or football without competing. Whereas 99% of skiers and perhaps 95% of cyclists manage to do so very satisfactorily. Your kids are racers so are different.

When I ski, I want to emulate a guide or instructor, not Candide Thovex or Bode Miller.

So I am not sure that analogy holds.

In anycase, there must be relatively few team sports played as children where participation does not drop very sharply from age 20 onwards?

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PJSki, I'm amazed at your attitude to ski racers. Most people would consider it a privileged and exciting to witness at first hand professional skiers at work, doing the same thing we all do but to a world class level, I know my friends did earlier this year when they saw racers training in ValT. Not you though, you just complain about them going ahead of you in the queue, and inconveniencing you by how much exactly? 1 minute perhaps?

As for the wider discussion, I simply cannot see the problem with funding minority sports and encouraging the young to take up an activity. It's good for the physical health of the nation and, if funding translates in to international success then it's good for the general health of the nation in terms of and the ever elusive feel-good factor. I simply cannot see a downside.

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After all it is free

Dr John, errr... I think you will find he was yanking your chain a bit there. Wink

As to your second paragraph - do you have any evidence that funding of elite athletes in minority sports:
a) Increases uptake in children?
b) That increase in uptake translates into health benefits?

As regards skiing I suspect that the number of children taking it up for the first time will be almost entirely dictated by parental inclinations and school trip availablity. Perhaps we should fund school ski trips rather than elite skiers?

As to a down side - everything you spend money on has as "Opportunity Cost" and you need to decide what you are not going to spend money on to fund it. What do you suggest?

Dr John, what do you expect people to do - repeat the last 5 pages for you? There's plenty in there, but your mind is obviously closed.

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stoatsbrother,

Yes well I didn't say that all elite sports should be funded everywhere merely that as a nation we should fund elite sports. WHich I think to some degree we do and sking doesn't do too well from funding formula. Maybe its for all the reasons you state?

brian

brian

From UK Sport (no medals, no cash):

Winning medals on the international sporting stage is incredibly tough and the margins between success and failure become smaller with each passing year. To ensure that the UK’s most talented athletes have every chance of realising their potential, UK Sport has created the World Class Performance Programme.

The Programme covers all summer Olympic and Paralympic sports, together with the high-performing winter Olympic sports and operates at three distinct levels:

* Podium - supporting athletes with realistic medal winning capabilities at the next Olympic/Paralympic Games (i.e. a maximum of four years away from the podium)
* Development – comprising of athletes whose performances have suggested that they have realistic medal winning capabilities for 2012 and newly funded sports that are demonstrating the ability to be competitive by 2012
* Talent - designed to support the identification and confirmation of athletes who have the potential to progress through the World Class pathway with the help of targeted investment

Some 1,200 of the nation’s leading athletes at the Podium and Development levels alone, benefit from an annual investment of around £100 million, with many more involved at the Talent level. The Programme works by ensuring that athletes get the support – delivered through their sport’s national governing body – that they need at every stage of their development.

Having run the Programme since 1997 and with the benefit of lessons learned over the Sydney and Athens Olympiads, UK Sport has developed a No Compromise approach, which ultimately means taking no short cuts in resourcing the best athletes to realise their medal ambitions. Funding is targeted at athletes via their sport's governing body. Podium and Development level athletes will be surrounded by a performance programme that includes coaching, training and competition support, medical and scientific services and access to the best facilities that the UK (and often the World) has to offer.

In addition, recognising that succeeding in the majority of Olympic and Paralympic sports effectively means a full time commitment on behalf of athletes, UK Sport makes a contribution towards living and sporting costs via a means-tested Athlete Personal Award.

I get hacked - off with folks on this site who suggest that any kind of criticism of the performance of our winter sports athletes and their 'divine right' to public funding and increases therein is somehow being 'unsupportive' or in some cases treasonable on a par with Guy Fawkes. The sad thing is that much of that criticism comes from those closely involved to the process. They need to learn that such overt loutish behaviour does nothing for their cause and, probably, reduces empathy for the very causes they choose to promote. It may even be this aggressiveness and arrogance from the allick-a-doos that has beset British skiing/boarding efforts of recent years ... rather worrying when you consider how marketable our premier skiers have been for the last 10 years.

You know it makes sense.

Agenterre, yep, there are a few on this site who, due to their 'involvement', seem to think they are deserving of more respect than the average skier. You only have to look at the condescending references to recreational skiers from some in this thread to see the elitist attitude that seems to abound within racing circles.

And I'm not yanking any chains regarding people doing race training and queuing. They behave like arsholes because of course what they are doing is more important than what anyone else is doing. rolling eyes

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PJSki, I don't think they are being 'elitist' .. promoting their favoured causes is their right. I am questioning the way they go about it. Contrast that with Ms Alcott's gracious response to the measly sum raised by us here or Alain Baxter's heart-felt farewell on his website ( nothing further to be gained for him out of being nice). The references to 'punters' by those involved are ludicrous .. I've fired salesmen, let alone marketeers, for less.

A snowHead

Agenterre, you're so right about the real racers and their down-to-earth attitude. It tends to be the second-raters and the hangers-on who display the unfortunate attitude.

A snowHead

I take that back .. we have had 'marketable skiers' for the last 30 years ( I apologise to the Bells)

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Hmm...not quite sure where those last few posts came from, as any vitriol seems to be coming from the anti-support camp.

Should we fund elite sport? Yes, I think so as part of a top-to-bottom programme. You see how many Swedish tennis players appeared on the scene about 5 years after Borg made his first appearances, similarly for the Swiss after Federer. I seem to remember FtS talking about the huge rise in memberships of rugby clubs after England won the RWC. Did you not feel a warm buzz after Kelly Holmes battled to her golds? That national feelgood factor came through whether you were interested in the sport or not. How many pople had even heard of Skeleton Bob before Shelly Rudman won her silver? If you don't think elite success (or failure) has an effect on national pride and the national psyche you've clearly never met an Ozzie or Kiwi. The criteria that brian posted seem all well and good to me: invest in potential, reward success, and (what wasn't in that, but certainly happens) starve failure. Carrot and stick - but you need both. So yes, I do think there should be taxpayer funding for sports - elite as well as grassroots - but as part of a mixed income stream.

On skiing specific grounds, at one of my first races (and for the avoidance of any doubt, I'll never be anything more than a passable club racer) I was talking to a 40-something lady from a neighbouring club who was still a bit of a quiver having had a coaching session from Ed Drake earlier that week (although, from the comments of some of the femail snowHead

s here that may not have been solely from his technical input Wink

). There's always a buzz when Dave Ryding turns up to a race (and often a sigh of relief when the racers see he's not brought his skis with him!). So there's certainly a trickle down effect there. From the couple of passing conversations I've had with both those I certainly wouldn't call either of them arrogant in any way whatsoever. I also don't see any "divine right" being expressed by plugboy - rather disappointment that TJ, being around 5th in the world in the juniors, is finding it difficult to find funding. Similarly Gillian's comments elsewhere about trying to find sponsorship for her son. There's a guy at my club who's no far behind TJ but considering giving it up, as the system looks like it's only going to be able to put on a few weeks training through the summer and autumn, rather than a full programme. He's been working his butt off trying to raise money, but as he put it "there's no point trying to compete at that level if all you can get is a couple of weeks training"

There's some pretty trenchant stuff coming from the antis based on them not liking ski-racing. Fine, you don't like it, so don't do it - but others may. I have absolutely no interest in freestyle - I think it's mostly pretty idiotic 'attitudinisation' - but I have no objection whatever to some of my taxes going to support promising athletes who do like it. The point about recreational skiers drifting into courses is a valid one - it's not that they're lost sheep...they're there because they want a go. You also need look no further than at the buzz there is about the EoSB race. Before I started doing any training I had no interest in actually racing, but if we saw some gates set up somewhere there was always a thrill in getting around a few of them at a reasonable rate - from my skiing partners as well as me. Has no-one ever had little kids wanting to beat you to the bottom of the slope? or challenging you/eachother to get the biggest jump of some little kicker? Where did this enthusiasm for challenging onesself turn into such jaded cynicism? And regarding queue behaviour, I doubt I've seen much more or less agressive beahviour from non-race kids of similar ages. As race training sessions are comparable to ski-school sessions, does PJSki have similar objections to ski-school lines?

One aspect of the way performance skiing is organised in the country is that until you get to the upper echelons it's largely voluntary, i.e. the people running the show are largely parents of the keener/better kids. So they may not be naturally competent sports administrators, and they will naturally have vested interests in promoting things their own kids do well at, and I'm not sure how well the upper echelons are held to account by pressures from those volunteer levels. But you can't expect much more of volunteers. If you want a properly professional organisation, then it needs proper funding - and maybe we're rather uncomfortably between stools at present.

Axsman is clearly a fully paid-up son of Thatcher, so I'm not going to get into a long argument with him - I'm clearly not going to change his views, and I doubt he's going to change mine. I'm afraid I see that attitude as the usual "knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing". However, if we are going to decide on individual things we are or are not going to spend our taxes on I'll let you off funding elite sportsmen as long as I can be let off funding a Trident replacement, please?

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GrahamN,

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After all it is free · Last edited by After all it is free on Thu 3-06-10 22:11; edited 1 time in total

PJSki, OK, so your and my experience is different. My main experience of racers on the mountain is in Tignes, and there they've generally been no worse (and generally better) behaved than the non-racers. I've also been in Chamonix, La Plagne, Meribel and Andermatt when there have been race training sessions on, and I can't remember ever being cut up by a racer. The general public in LDA, Zermatt, Gressoney on the other hand... In the mountains though, I generally go to areas where racers don't.

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GrahamN, I think you should reread welovetoski's posts. In addition to being woefully misinformed about some of the things he has made statements about, he continues to make nebulous ex cathedra statements about the social benefits of sport without any really clear evidence, let alone saying how they would apply to skiing in the UK. And I do think it is arrogant of elite athletes to see state funding of sport as something which is a given - especially in these times. Not something you see from Chemmy - or from (as far as I recall) the Bell brothers.

The examples you give of trickle down are amongst that tiny chunk of skiers who do race already.

There still remains the issue, which more moderate folk like rob@rar accept, that ski racing does not actually really connect with/resemble recreational skiing at all. Same in other sports - Chris Boardman was reported as saying he really did not enjoy cycling - it was merely a means to compete.

And whilst the fridges may be doing reasonably well ( although you can still get very cheap sessions at most with tesco vouchers...) aren't dry ski slopes dying off one by one?

Laundryman spot on.

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Should the government fund elite sport?

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