 Poster: A snowHead
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| Winterhighland wrote: |
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| given we are not an alpine nation |
Perhaps we'd be better focusing our efforts away from traditional Alpine racing disciplines then and more on freestyle disciplines where it's not necessary to have Alpine scale mountains to hone your skills and possibly Nordic events were a lot of training can be achieved off-snow???? |
Which is what the AIS in OZ did years ago... honed in on the expertise in womens gymnastics and used some retired gymnasts(16 y.o. lol) to turn them into aerial skiers... with a lot of success...
Plus they could do some training in a large puddle of water in summer
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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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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Blunty, that's weird 
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stoatsbrother, The amounts reflect success at Turin. Skeleton and Curling were held to have been successful, Alpine Skiing wasn't.
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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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And look how much Nordic is getting  . We now have 5 skiers qualified to race in world cup events, all are under 19. We achieved a top 10 at the junior worlds last season. One of our skiers is ranked first in the world his year group and is a very good prospect for the future.
One problem with only funding on past performance is that it can lock in the past bad performance and make it very difficult for exceptional talent to succeed in the future. This can be particularly true of minority sports where there is only a small base from which to build. We need support fro both grass roots participationa and for our good prospects in advance.
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Those figures I find really quite shocking.
I've also just downloaded the latest UKS accounts and had a very quick scan. Obviously there's a large focus on London 2012, but I couldn't find a single refrence to the Winter Olympics. I think that tells it's own story?
and btw - CEO of UKS total emoluments? £140-145k.
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Jon.L, it's a shame, but London 2012 is a bit of a double-edged sword. It's fantastic to have and i personally can't wait, but it is soaking up a lot of lottery funding that is having a detrimental effect on community level sport and minority sports (even those minority sports who were expecting additional funding as they are olympic sports, but ones we don't traditionally participate in at the "elite" level, eg, handball).
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of government money being put into sport (I know, I've worked in sports development and education for 15 years, and the current investment in the development of school sport is excellent at the moment), just that a lot of it is skewed towards 2012, which has to be a success.
Could be a good time for SSGB to give Dave Brailsford (British Cycling) a ring - I've heard he's thinking about working his magic with a different sport, although they'd probably only be able to afford him part-time...still, might be worth it, and he could make up the difference with a couple of paper rounds 
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It's interesting to compare the levels of investment in the winter olympics against the summer olympics.
The entire budget for the Vancouver olympiad is less than whats being pumped into Diving for 2012...
...And we're spending almost twice as much on advancing Table Tennis than on Alpine skiing and Snowboarding put together - just how many ping pong balls can you buy for £1.2m?
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| Richard_Sideways wrote: |
| ..And we're spending almost twice as much on advancing Table Tennis than on Alpine skiing and Snowboarding put together - just how many ping pong balls can you buy for £1.2m? |
Now don't take things too much out of context.....that is over the next three years, so only £400k worth of balls per year....
£35m on swimming?
£14m on Hockey?
£1.4m on HANDBALL!!! It's THROWING A BALL for f**k's sake!!!!
Seriously, you would expect a lot more to be spent on summer Olympics than Winter, but the disparity just seems so, so wrong...... Can we make the boiling of blood an Olympic sport? I think I may be in with a chance.....
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In answer to my earlier question, £1.2m will buy you 12,351,679 practice balls.
Thats 11586 per day to practice on until the start of 2012...
...or 1 every seven and a half seconds...
Likewise to Jon.L, nobody expects the same funding as our heavy-hitter sports, but this is just crumbs from the table. If anyone of an activist persuasion wants to start a petition for better funding of our winter games athletes, you've got my signature.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Richard_Sideways, and I'm sure you could get a few extra thrown in for a bulk buy that big!
Couldn't skiing just tag on to a sport like Table tennis to pick up some of its funding?? I'm sure a bit of "downhill ping pong" (table on a sledge) would make for a much more interesting spectacle than in your average sports hall. 
Sorry, now I'm getting a bit silly........
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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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Blunty, at the risks of getting a good kicking - a lot more for paralympic alpine than non-paralympic?
Probably there are other funding sources for the able-bodied team - but I am not sure that makes much sense.
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stoatsbrother, disability sport is often more expensive. I have little experience of adapted skiing, but would imagine additional costs due to need for more specialist (and expensive) equipment, specialist transport/accommodation, greater ratios of support staff (some may need carers/helpers etc.); possibly more complex medical support required and so on. No doubt there are others out there who know more than us
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You know it makes sense.
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Blunty, I am sure you are right about the costs - I am still not sure that makes it the right budgetary decision - especially when the funding - as mentioned above - is so clearly linked to throwing money at things in which we will be successful and more likely to enhance the medal tally and public image,
I am not entirely sure that - all considerations of huge personal courage aside - that this is the right way to go. But with all the stuff about "home nations" and multiple small bodies looking after snowsports and instruction in our crowded Island - I am not sure I can blame UK sport.
*ducks to avoid incoming*
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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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stoatsbrother, forgot to add that perhaps the paralympians have been the more successful recently - possibly another reason for greater portion of the funding pie??
It is difficult to determine how decisions are made regards who gets what - and the administration of all sports in the UK is a highly complex plate of spaghetti, with a large number of bodies/quangos vying for control at a political level. I put it down to the fact that we did not start with a blank sheet of paper in this country - most of our national governing bodies are very old, and developed organically over time. They carry a lot of historical baggage that can be difficult to simply cast off and start again, consequently they do not all necessarily have the correct structures in place to meet modern day challenges. Also, alot of sport is run by unpaid volunteers, and you will often get conflict between the "old" and the "new" within the same sport.
I suppose we have to do the best we can with what we've got at the moment 
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Poster: A snowHead
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For sure, all the cash being spent on Olympic infrastructure in the East End of London could have paid for a massive amount of sport, at all levels.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| Quote: |
stoatsbrother, forgot to add that perhaps the paralympians have been the more successful recently - possibly another reason for greater portion of the funding pie??
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I think this is probably the case, comparatively speaking we do a lot better in paralympic sports than able bodied sports.
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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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Even Beach Volleyball gets more funding than Alpine skiing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It really doesn't cost anymore to set up a net on a beach and hit the ball around than to send a group of 20 athletes to the alps with huge amounts of equipment to train does it??????
We've got no medal chance in that either as all our pairings are outside the top 50 world rankings.
Our best junior skier (No1 in GB for all disciplines) is ranked No27 in Super G, No 31 in Downhill & No 44 in Super Comb on the World Junior rankings list, who came 24th in the World Jnior chanps Super G, our best ever result.
His "reward" for achieving all this? A cut in his funding! We now have to find an extra £5000 this season to race and train a full europa cup speed programme (DH & SG).
Here's a thought though.
There are aprrox 1,000,000 Brits go skiing every year. If everyone of those donated a minimum of just £1 each to the athletes fund there would be enough to solve all the funding problems for all of the snowsports - Alpine, Nordic, Snowbarding, Freestyle etc.
Let's get it started on Snowheads - All the snowsport athletes need our help. We have a huge amount of talented, determined and dedicated athletes who could actually win medals with the correct funding.
Just ask Alain Baxter! He won a Bronze medal in salt lake in 2002.
If everyone did it we would make a huge difference.
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Plugboy, great idea. You offering to coordinate / promote it?!
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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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Plugboy,
| Quote: |
Our best junior skier (No1 in GB for all disciplines) is ranked No27 in Super G, No 31 in Downhill & No 44 in Super Comb on the World Junior rankings list, who came 24th in the World Jnior chanps Super G, our best ever result.
His "reward" for achieving all this? A cut in his funding! We now have to find an extra £5000 this season to race and train a full europa cup speed programme (DH & SG).
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You missed out the word alpine.  Our best junior skier is ranked in the top 10 in the juniors in the distance rankings. However I agree it is grossly unfair for funding to be cut when juniors, the future of the sport, are producing improving results. If you don't fund the juniors and have a sensible progression through the age groups and support into the senior team there will be no good senior athletes.
The main reason we are now getting good results in nordic is that we now have a clear pathway up through the age groups into the senior and world cup teams
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| Plugboy wrote: |
| All the snowsport athletes need our help........... |
Junior did the Ed Drake race at Hemel last weekend - a great day which he really enjoyed, meeting Ed and all that. There are similar ideas going for Dave Ryding as well which we're more than happy to contribute/take part in.
Such a sad indictment of the situation, though, that these guys have to resort to such things to fund their Olympic and World Cup dreams......
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beanie1, Yep. Already in motion. In contact with SSGB to try to sort out an account to pay into.
Then will put out an appeal on every single snow Forum and contact all the Ski tour operators to ask everyone who books a holiday to donate.
Everyone can afford £1 or more?
Dave Horsley, Sorry! Meant to say Alpine.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Plugboy, I think it's a great idea! Good luck! I'm sure many snowheads will support it.
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Plugboy, is there any way a 'surcharge' of say £5 could be introduced to the cost of skiing holidays (either per person or per booking) on the strict proviso that it is channelled directly into the funding of our athletes? Holidaymakers could of course be given the option not to pay it if they are so inclined?
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Jon.L, that's a great sponsorship idea. I've just booked an EasyJet flight to Toulouse and proffered the couple of quid for carbon offsetting. It would be brilliant if an airline or TO could proudly announce itself as sponsor, say, of the GB ski team and do the same sort of thing.
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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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Doesn't the team already have sponsors?
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beanie1, I expect so, was just using that as a random example. And the more the merrier when it comes to sponsors, surely.
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You know it makes sense.
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Don't know, it probably depends on contracts signed with existing sponsors?
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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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beanie1, indeed.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Hurtle, kind of off-topic, but I love Waitrose's idea of giving shoppers a token at the checkout to pop into the charity box of their choice.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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laundryman, do they? Must have a look, now that a Waitrose has opened near me.
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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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| laundryman wrote: |
| Hurtle, kind of off-topic, but I love Waitrose's idea of giving shoppers a token at the checkout to pop into the charity box of their choice. |
Yep, all local stuff at our store too. 3 organisations share £1000 depending on the split in the boxes. Different organisations every month.
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Don't know about downhill ping pong, but Ice Tennis would be kinda cool. Maybe we could get some top ice skaters and train them to play tennis, then play Davis Cup ties on ice and we might win one..... 
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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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laundryman, Especially if we could choose to which events we were directing the funds.
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If it was a voluntary donation by individuals added to everyones holiday then it would not be classed as sponsorship. I'm going to see how many of the TO's will sign up to it anyhow.
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Plugboy, the sponsorship element I had in mind was the attaching of the sponsor's name to the activity.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Plugboy,
I have no problem with coughing up a couple of extra quid towards the team although i think i already contribute through BASI. Also many years ago, when the Brit Champs were held in Tignes, we gave free board & lodging to some racers whilst the team management stayed in the only 5 * hotel in Tignes. Perhaps they have not quite got their priorities correct 
I would also ask you how the squads are chosen as two of our top ladies according to FIS points, Louise Thomas & Saga Fairweather, are not in any squads??
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stewart woodward, There is a FIS matrix for team GB selection according to YOB. Different for males & females.
I think both Sega & Louise are in the team this year as both were out training in Saas Fee with the rest only last week. Sega only does part of the GB team programme as she has trained at Burke academy in the USA for the past few years. Now speaks with an American/Northern England twang!
Blunty, Unfortunately FIS have very strict rules on logos/sponsors names that can be put on helmets. Only 1 sponsor per helmet at 50 sq cm max! No sponsors at all allowed on skis. Only 1 sponsor on Catsuits. Nothing on gloves, shin guards, hand guards, goggles or boots. Only the makers name.
British Land I think pay for the British Champs and book the hotels. If someone knows better, please correct me.
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