 Poster: A snowHead
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rob@rar,
hugely disappointing situation; count me in of you can find a donation medium
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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rob@rar, my showheads account balence is +£50, if you can get enpugh others to contribute I'll gladly throw that into the pot
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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rob@rar, I've just asked her to be a friend on Facebook and offered her the Easimobile! I doubt it will interest her, but it's the thought that counts.
rjs, I would normally expect someone to finish one or two places higher inthe olympics/WChamps for the reasons rob@rar, mentioned.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| hammerite wrote: |
| But it could be done like you say with XC |
Actually... it can't be. XC skiing depends even more on technique as alpine skiing. But you are not alone in thinking this way. There was quite few people, including some in countries like Finland, which has long xc skiing history, so they sponsored some pretty good Kenia runner. They offered him full service, to be honest even more then to their own skiers (they had/have some money issues after 2001 doping scandals), and result after almost 10 years... that guy still can't ski, and anyone with 2 minutes time (even if they are 80 years old) can beat the hell out of him.
So no, things don't go that easy.
| norris wrote: |
| British skiers are seriously underfunded |
| skidog wrote: |
| f your representing your country, your country should be backing you 100% and its disappointing that the government (in particular) is not |
I have no idea how big budget GB team has/had, but I know a bit more about other countries. And there's no country which means something in skiing, where government would be paying for their team. Sure they get some support from government, but majority of money comes from sponsors.
Now let's talk about "seriously underfunded". At the moment, our alpine part of ski federation has yearly budget of about 1.2mio eur. That's not money they get from government but all money they have available. And it's budget for all teams, from 10 year old kids programs to WC team. From this we got few WC victories this year, around 10 top 10 placements in Vancouver and 2 silver medals. Next to that, we have one skier, who is on her own (Tina Maze to be particular). Her budget is less then 200.000eur, and she's paying her coaches, technicians, traveling, etc. etc. For those 200k eur she ended with medal from WCH last year, 6th in overall WC last year, 3rd in GS ranking, few WC victories and this year she has 2 medals in Vancouver, she's currently 5th overall in WC and 3rd in GS.
So getting 400k+eur just from government (based on numbers in one of previous posts) for team of basically 2 or 3 people at most, can be hardly called underfunded. Sure it's nothing compared to Austrian or Swiss federation, but nothing can be compared to their money... and their results.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Dear snowheads. As above. Why don't we sponsor Chemmy to the tune of a few grand?
I'm quite happy to put in 20 / 50 quid if  would like to organise the paypal - damn sight better money spent than on those poncy footballers.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| primoz wrote: |
| hammerite wrote: |
| But it could be done like you say with XC |
Actually... it can't be. XC skiing depends even more on technique as alpine skiing. But you are not alone in thinking this way. There was quite few people, including some in countries like Finland, which has long xc skiing history, so they sponsored some pretty good Kenia runner. They offered him full service, to be honest even more then to their own skiers (they had/have some money issues after 2001 doping scandals), and result after almost 10 years... that guy still can't ski, and anyone with 2 minutes time (even if they are 80 years old) can beat the hell out of him.
So no, things don't go that easy.
| norris wrote: |
| British skiers are seriously underfunded |
| skidog wrote: |
| f your representing your country, your country should be backing you 100% and its disappointing that the government (in particular) is not |
I have no idea how big budget GB team has/had, but I know a bit more about other countries. And there's no country which means something in skiing, where government would be paying for their team. Sure they get some support from government, but majority of money comes from sponsors.
Now let's talk about "seriously underfunded". At the moment, our alpine part of ski federation has yearly budget of about 1.2mio eur. That's not money they get from government but all money they have available. And it's budget for all teams, from 10 year old kids programs to WC team. From this we got few WC victories this year, around 10 top 10 placements in Vancouver and 2 silver medals. Next to that, we have one skier, who is on her own (Tina Maze to be particular). Her budget is less then 200.000eur, and she's paying her coaches, technicians, traveling, etc. etc. For those 200k eur she ended with medal from WCH last year, 6th in overall WC last year, 3rd in GS ranking, few WC victories and this year she has 2 medals in Vancouver, she's currently 5th overall in WC and 3rd in GS.
So getting 400k+eur just from government (based on numbers in one of previous posts) for team of basically 2 or 3 people at most, can be hardly called underfunded. Sure it's nothing compared to Austrian or Swiss federation, but nothing can be compared to their money... and their results. |
OK fair enough on the conversion of athletes, but if you get people from a very young age (school) who clearly has athletic ability (and high V02 max) then there is time to hone their XC skiing skills. Whether they end up as efficient and fluent as those who are gifted would be debatable - but you don't know if you don't try.
I think the ski teams funding was £372,000. The team consists of 14 skiers who take place in various levels of competition (not just competing at World Cup) - so compared to Maze's budget of €200k they are underfunded. - this info was taken from the SSGB thread lack of success thread.
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| JimW wrote: |
Dear snowheads. As above. Why don't we sponsor Chemmy to the tune of a few grand?
I'm quite happy to put in 20 / 50 quid if would like to organise the paypal - damn sight better money spent than on those poncy footballers. |
Thanks.
I've started a new thread in the busier section of the forum to see if there's enough interest in supporting Chemmy. See see here for more info.
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rob@rar, You can add me to the list as well.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| hammerite wrote: |
| I think the ski teams funding was £372,000. The team consists of 14 skiers who take place in various levels of competition (not just competing at World Cup) - so compared to Maze's budget of €200k they are underfunded. - this info was taken from the SSGB thread lack of success thread. |
Slovenia alpine team consists of around 100 racers in program (from kids to WC team), with about 60 coaches, technicians, doctors, physios etc. (partime or fulltime employed). Having 1.2mio eur for program like this is not really so much compared to 400.000eur for program of 14 skiers. And I still think that results of GB team, can't really compare to result of our team. Don't you think so? So I still say, money is not biggest problem you guys have.
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| primoz wrote: |
| hammerite wrote: |
| I think the ski teams funding was £372,000. The team consists of 14 skiers who take place in various levels of competition (not just competing at World Cup) - so compared to Maze's budget of €200k they are underfunded. - this info was taken from the SSGB thread lack of success thread. |
Slovenia alpine team consists of around 100 racers in program (from kids to WC team), with about 60 coaches, technicians, doctors, physios etc. (partime or fulltime employed). Having 1.2mio eur for program like this is not really so much compared to 400.000eur for program of 14 skiers. And I still think that results of GB team, can't really compare to result of our team. Don't you think so? So I still say, money is not biggest problem you guys have. |
You have snow in Slovenia. Your skiers can live in their home towns at the foot of the mountain.
Ours can't. There's a big overhead in travel and accommodation.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Maybe this sounds crazy for you, but this is not exactly true. Most of trainings, especially for WC team is done anywhere else except at home. Pretty much everyone from juniors up (14 or 15 years old kids) do a whole lot of training somewhere else then on home slopes. I don't have exact numbers to be 100% sure, but in general, I would say expenses for travel and accommodation are not much different when comparing Slovenian, Austrian or GB team. None of them trains at home slope, at least not most of time.
Things in racing sport are different then in recreational skiing. Sure I have 10km to nearest bigger ski resort, but that doesn't mean much when it comes to racing.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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primoz, do the kids who are younger than 14 or 15 train with their local ski race club?
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primoz, Very interesting.
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You know it makes sense.
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primoz, There is still a difference between being able to train within driving distance and needing to be away from home.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Robrar yes most of them do. But I guess this is not the point. This particular discussion is about money problems and I guess we all know how money is split when it comes to this. Kid program takes maybe 5%, or if I'm really generous, maybe 10% of budget. 80 or 90% of budget is spent on junior on senior programs. And in those programs, things are not so different for someone living in Alps or someone living elsewhere.
Rjs driving distance can mean many things. I don't consider Pitztal as driving distance, even though it's only 4 hours away. But I agree it's still a lot closer then from GB. When I look back to my racing days, I have been around and off from home (even if it was just 50km from home) for about hmm... I don't know 200 days a year for sure. So now it really doesn't matter if this is 10, 50 or 500km away from home. But it sure feels better to pop home from time to time, which is possible if you are 50km away, and not so much if you are 500km away.
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Poster: A snowHead
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primoz, I think my point is that if you're trying to build a very high pyramid you need to start with a very wide base. The fact that Alpine countries have a large number of very able young racers means that when national funding really begins to kick in, at 14 or 15 in your country's case, there is probably a much higher number of potentially world class skiers to select from.
I agree that the equation is not straightforward (money does not guarantee success) I think it's possible to say that it is a very important factor. There are lots of examples which prove this point.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I think it would be fair to say that whilst money cannot guarantee success, the lack of sufficient funds is almost certain to cause failure
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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primoz, Another thing to consider is the scale of the GBR program compared with that of Slovenia. Just looking at the JWCH SG for the boys I can count six Slovenians, I'm guessing that there weren't six coaches for them so the cost per racer is lower than for our one racer (even if he didn't have to pay for it himself), the same will be true for Chemmy.
I think we do better for the levels below this but I don't think they are included in the costs for the "National Team" anymore.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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I know and I agree. That's why Austrians and Swiss are so strong. They don't have 5 or 10 kids to choose from, but 100s of them. And chances to get one world champion out of 5 is pretty low, while they get much better when you need to pick one of 100 or one of 1000.
I also agree, that it's much easier for Alpine countries to produce better skiers on WC level, then for GB for example. But main point I'm getting from this, and few other, threads here is, that Chemmy would would be much better, if she would have more money. To be honest, I seriously doubt she would be. I'm not saying she's not good or anything. She's A LOT better then I ever was, and to be honest, I would kill for her results while I was still skiing. On top of that I have a lot of respect for her and for her results. But I still don't think she would do much better, even if her budget would be unlimited.
On the other side, chances for GB to produce World champion in future would be a lot better with more money. In theory, a lot money don't guarantee World champion but in reality it's actually pretty close to this... at least on long run.
Rjs yes and no. As I said before already, I have no idea about exact numbers. I'm out of WC and national team things, at least as skier or tech, for 10 years now, but I would still think that at least on WC level, cost per racer is about same with small and with big teams. With small teams you are stuck with one or two coaches, from which one is also serviceman, in best case physio and that's it. With big teams number cost of coaches and service is definitely smaller (per racer of course), but all of a sudden you have all sorts of "escort" people around. So on the end, cost per racer goes sky high, sometimes even higher then with smaller teams. Back in my years as tech on xc ski WC, I was actually only tech with out team (4 racers), while Norwegians had 18 guys (waxers, ski testers etc.) for 12 to 14 racers... and that was just service. But on the end, my skiers normally had fastest skis on course, even though it meant sometimes no sleep from Friday morning till Sunday evening, but that's another story already, and definitely way off-topic for this thread 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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primoz, Just to clear up a few things about team GB.
There are a numbe of levels of the British Team. Chilldren's of around 45-50. Youth of around 18. Junior/FIS of around 8. Europa Cup of 6 & World Cup of 5.
A total number of about 80 athletes.
They get £372K over a four year period!! Thats just £85K per year enough for 3 coaches? Not like the Slovenians who get 1.2M euros per year.
The Chiildrens team all have to buy the GB team catsuit at over £100 a time. They have to pay £300-400 per international race they do to represent GB.
All the youth team are mainly on a self funded programme.
The FIS team are only partly funded. My son TJ ids on the Europa Cup team and is currently having to apy for all his training racing, coching costs even had to hire a van this week.
The difference between him and th eSlovenian team at the recent World junior champs was vast. I don't think that Bojan Kline had to prep any of his own skis there!!!!!
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Had to go at 2am - end of my meal break - working nights.
primoz, I can assue you having had TJ on the GB team of one description or another for the past 8 seasons and going to a number of international races that most of the other teams there have far more coaches, physios, servicemen etc than the GB team ever does.
I gave Bojan Kline as an example because he is the top Slovenian Junior, the same age as TJ and of a very similar standard. They also know each other. TJ would die for the things that he gets, whcih is a huge ammount more than probably all our Juniors put together. I've seen it first hand too.
You just cannot compare your set up to ours. You are an Alpine nation with mountains and a big budget. You hold international races at all age levels right up to world cup.
We are a non alpine nation with a small budget (zero at the moment!) and only limited skiing in Scotland with a handful of races of very low standard.
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| Quote: |
if you're trying to build a very high pyramid you need to start with a very wide base
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Hurrah. Which is why money needs to be spent on widening access at local level - eg keeping Hillend open (and I make no excuses for banging on about this one). Getting all up in arms about the fact that established racers have money problems isn't doing much for the future of the sport, which depends on children learning to ski and having the opportunity to train locally.
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Lizzard, I'm not so sure, if the established racers like Chemmy can't get sufficient funding why on earth would anyone want to compete for their country, after all lets face it, currently their country (and by that I mean the political figures in charge) don't seem to give a damn about them.
I suspect (but haven't got the figures in front of me to be certain) that the DHO puts in more money per anum towards training juniors than the official sources of funding, hell our racing and training manager Ingrid Christophersen got the MBE for services to skiing, its a sad situation when a small club like the DHO puts more money into funding training than the national body thats supposed to be in charge 
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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D G Orf, indeed, it's a shame that parents have to be rich enough to send their kids away with DHO or Kandahar to get them a decent level of coaching. DHO camps are not cheap by any means.
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Sideshow_Bob, Oh I'd agree they're not. However a very hight proportion of DHO funds goes into supporting racing and training, if a small club such as the DHO can do that it seems a shame that big important organisations cannot do a little better, unfortunately it seems to be the case that the more important an organisation the greater the number of incompetants it attracts 
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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hammerite, Agree with you. Britsh cycling has made ex rowers and roadies into world class track riders.
To add a little spice here and touch of controversy, I have to ask myself what is the point of elite programmes in sport? The main goal should surely be to draw people into particpation. Gold medals are all very lovely but if it doesn't translate into more mass particpation and improving the health and welfare of the population in general then it's money invested for little else than a little national kudos. Now in some sports success at the top level really has boosted grass roots interest, and one great example is cricket. Other sports it's been almost the other way around where growing particpation has produced the elite athletes (triathlon for example). National bodies have hard choices to make. Invest the £20k in Chemmy or in new facilities? There is a limited pot, and I personally know a couple of athletes that would have benefitted from some lotto money, but the pot is very very small. £20k is a lot! The UK Tri squad has three Olympic gold contenders in it, and they're realistic a world champion,his brother and a lady world champion. All are on less than that.. Our Ironman world champion and world record holder gets next to nothing.
Horrid decisons to make.
I'll stir a little more. Chemmy is in a sport where there is a bit of cash around. Who wants to sponsor a weightlifter? Chemmy has the opportunity for sponsorship. Unfortuantely not to the same extent as say the Austrians. But it's their national sport. Skiing is a minority sport in the UK. Skiing, Tri, swimming, whatever... we'll always struggle for cash.
Having said that I wish Chemmy all the luck in the world, she is a great ad for the sport and a fine athlete. I'm sure she has the portentialto achieve more, and I hope she gets the funds from somewhere to do it.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| greg66 wrote: |
| If anyone is in London and available next Thursday, this is a way to help her and the other GB skiers: www.gbsos.co.uk |
Are any snowHeads attending this event?
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You know it makes sense.
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Sideshow_Bob, Does she pick up as much sponsorship cash on the back of that particular campaign as KP? Probably not. Ask yourself why, and therein lies the answer.....
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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And its just the alpine team. The xc team have to fund themselves. No money from SSGB as was. The xc team is very young, all most all are under 20. Getting 3 qualified for this years olympics was exceptional. The problem wil be keeping our good athletes going and improving for another 4 years on minimal funding.
I've not seen any of the squad yet, not sure if they are back from the olympics - might see the two Andrews on Thursday night if they're not racing in Europe. We have a good squad of young skiers who have been training from a young age. They have impressed the nordic nations with their ability and progress.
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Poster: A snowHead
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The Voice of Reason, where did I claim she did? My point was she is using her marketability and is still getting far more money than Baxter did and I bet than David Ryding will ever do when he starts skiing at the same level (which he will do fingers crossed, good old Lancashire/Pendle lad).
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| hammerite wrote: |
| I bet a lot of the Chinese on the aerials were good gymnasts before they tried skiing. |
The Aussie Aerials girls (aka The Flying Kangaroos) all started as gymnasts. In fact Alisa Camplin who won Gold at SLC and Bronze at Turin can't actually ski very well at all (and admits it). However because they have been getting the results (Olympic medals last three games, world cup wins, including overall titles) they have also been getting almost all the funding, while the Alpine team (which is pretty much Craig Branch now) live on crumbs. In fact when SSGB when bust the Aussie Alpine team also lost their support staff because they trained with the GB team....
Hopefully after Vancouver the rest of the Freestyle team (moguls (silver medal) and skier cross(6th place)) might pick up some more funding.
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FAQ
