A friend sent me this article from the guardian concerning the abandonment of British Fencing by the UK Sport, the Olympic funding authority for Britain:
Last week [British Fencing] was informed by UK Sport that its Olympic funding had been withdrawn. Over the next four-year cycle, leading up to the Tokyo Games, it will receive not a penny to match the £3.1m it received from the national lottery, via UK Sport, to prepare its campaign for Rio last summer.
Why?
Zero funding amounts to official confirmation that your sport has no chance of producing a medal from the 2020 Games, or even in 2024. UK Sport’s policy is to look at each discipline from an eight-year perspective, assessing the division of about half a billion pounds on the basis, as it put it, “of the medals won, the number of medallists developed, and the quality of the systems and processes in place to find and support the nation’s most promising future champions”. Its support generally equates to between £20,000 and £60,000 per athlete per annum. For this, results are not just expected but demanded.
I believe this is how the US Olympic Committee (USOC) also operates, funding winners while ignoring the losers. On its face, it’s a baffling approach to asking a sporting federation to improve its top-line athletes, by eliminating the very support which one might think it needs in order to produce what is requested. However, the article does go on to note:
But it should be remembered that British Cycling, currently riding a boom with 130,000 members, had barely 20,000 less than a decade ago. And whoever dreamed that British gymnasts would one day be winning Olympic medals? Our fencers, who thought they had parried the worst, must now launch a swift and decisive riposte.
That suggests two things: First, the funding is not utterly necessary to produce top of the line fencers. Second, and more subversively, it suggests the funding, and the strings that come with it, could be done without. I know US Fencing was in danger of being taken over by the USOC a few years back due to a lack of financial soundness (inefficiency, etc – not criminal), and I assume this was possible because they accepted USOC funding.
I wonder if US Fencing ever considers rejecting USOC funding.
