Athletics: To have and have not: Mind the gap

Pat Butcher says Britain's sportsmen are in urgent need of financial assistance

The fists punching the air when the first Lottery funding for Olympic preparation was finally determined last Wednesday were quickly lowered for a dig in the solar plexus of sports administration when the British Olympic Association Athletes' Commission report came out the following day. The report had a lot of snappy one-liners, making for good sound- bites on the parlous state of funding and general back-up for Britain's Olympic teams. All it lacked was a title. Mind the Gap might be appropriate.

As the public was made abundantly aware from the Atlanta results last summer, there is a gap between expectation of success and the results. And as the elite authors of the report and their supporters made clear on Thursday, there has been a gap between the dates that funds were promised and their arrival. Less obviously, but significantly for the future, there is a gap between the older haves and the younger have-nots.

The rower Guin Batten's complaint - "we are getting left behind" - was amply demonstrated by the glaring contrast with the French success in Atlanta - three times as many medals as Britain, but significantly, 10 times more golds. Roddy Ainslie, father of the 19-year-old Atlanta yachting silver medallist Ben Ainslie said: "France has 20,000 sailing coaches, it's virtually part of the education system, and centrally funded. It's similar in Spain and Italy."

Ainslie junior is competing in Holland this weekend, thanks (again) to his parents' backing, which his father estimates has been "around pounds 30,000 over the last four years, the rest [pounds 40,000] has come from the Sports Aid Foundation and small sponsorships. But it's been a problem since Atlanta. The SAF money dried up with the announcement of Lottery funding over a year ago. The Sports Council announced last November that money would be available 'immediately', and Ben's just received his application form, to be returned by July, so it's unlikely he'll see anything before August."

The situation is rather more urgent for Britain's Winter Olympians, who are only eight months away from their next rendezvous, in Nagano. Lenny Paul is a member of Britain's bobsleigh squad, who have main hopes for a medal in Japan. But they are still waiting for funding to pay for much- needed training abroad. Paul said: "Our federation has done everything we've asked, including filling out interminable forms. We need to go to Germany or Canada. The more ice-time we get, the better. But our trip to Germany in July is on hold until the funds come through.

"We're fourth in the world, we've won two European medals, we've done well for the last six to eight years, but if they want the sport to die in Britain, they're going the right way about it. Nick Phipps ended up pounds 20-30,000 in debt, that's why he quit. I reckon I'm out of pocket between pounds 15,000 and pounds 20,000, we've even had to buy our own runners in the past."

Emlyn Jones, probably the most experienced top sports administrator in Britain, looks on with dismay. A former chairman of the Sports Council, he was responsible for the administration of the Top 100 Club, which was set up by the Sports Aid Foundation to assist elite performers towards Atlanta. Jones said yesterday: "In over 40 years in sports administration, I've never seen British sport in such a confused state. The athletes should have been getting money on an interim basis. And the Academy of Sport has been unduly delayed, we won't see the benefits until at least 2004. I can remember going to see the French Sports Institute back in 1965, and look what they're doing now."

Two years ago, the former national athletics coach Frank Dick was warning that over-reliance on the Linford Christies of our sports world was affecting the opportunities for younger talents to mature properly. That situation is occurring throughout Olympic sports, the average age of the Atlanta team was significantly higher than in previous Games. Annamarie Stapleton, one of the authors of the report, felt it wasn't necessarily the lure of money in the more fashionable or semi-professional sports such as athletics which was retaining practitioners long past previous retirement age. "One of the problems is that funding only comes with success, so that permits the older, more successful athletes to continue, while the developing youngsters are left out," she said. "That's what the new system is intended to rectify, and we hope that it is going to be framed that way for the future."