Alan Hubbard: UK Sport's funding policy is thoroughly unsporting

Team GB's successes in Sochi, with set medal targets exceeded in both the Winter Olympics and subsequent Paralympics, have rightly been extolled by funding body UK Sport who jubilantly cite their policy of National Lottery and Exchequer investment on a "no compromise" basis as a prime reason for the current euphoria.

Fair enough. Like the golden days of 2012, it couldn't have happened without such a huge infusion of public dosh.

But this "no-time-for-losers" philosophy continues to attract opprobrium, challenged by those less successful sports, notably basketball and water polo, which have been cast into the financial wilderness, and is now set to become a political hot potato with the former Labour Sports Minister Kate Hoey taking up the cudgel in Parliament on their behalf.

The former Northern Ireland high jump champion, currently MP for Vauxhall and sports adviser to London Mayor Boris Johnson, was hugely popular among sports people when she was Minister from 1999 until 2001, and seen very much as a champion of the grass rooters.

She has told insidethegames she is "deeply dismayed" by the continuing hardline approach to funding, with UK Sport accused of abandoning team sports and some women's sports, and plans to raise the issue at Westminster.

Kate Hoey, pictured here with London Mayor Boris Johnson, says she is "deeply dismayed" by UK Sport's approach to funding ©Getty Images

"Basically the system is unfair," she says. "Of course we all want to see GB winning medals but sport is more than just about that.

"I am really quite concerned that in the aftermath of the London Olympics those who make the decisions about funding only do so on the basis of potential gold medals. It is a dreadful philosophy.

"I am particularly unhappy about basketball which is such a growing and inspirational sport.

"Just to keep on funding the already successful sport, and especially massively increasing those like sailing - (awarded an extra £25 million ($41 million/€30 million) - to the detriment of others is too simplistic a way of allocating public money."

She adds: "I believe that every sport which competes in the Olympics should have a basic funding, and team sports certainly should not be discriminated against as appears to be the case now.

"It is so disheartening. Maybe I am a little old-fashioned but there is a wider issue here than just winning medals. Sport should always be for all, not just an elite few."

Hoey says she will be lobbying MPs of all parties, bringing an interesting exchange with the present Sports Minister, Helen Grant - the first woman since Hoey herself to hold the job - and her own Party's Shadow spokesman Clive Efford. Both have expressed support for the status quo, former London cabbie Efford telling insidethegames recently: "UK Sport has an outstanding record in supporting athletes and sports that bring success at the highest level...I do not think it is for politicians to try to pick and choose which sports are going to be successful and which are not at the elite end of competition."

Sports minister Helen Grant says she sees no need to change the policy of UK Sports
©Getty Images

While Grant maintains: "My door is always open but UK Sports policy has always been very successful and I don't see a change in the immediate future."

No boat rocking there then.

However, it is clear the both the Government and UK Sport are under mounting pressure to address the "bias" in funding between elite individual and team sports, highlighted when five of the latter - basketball, women's water polo, visually impaired football and goalball - failed to overturn the decision to strip them of all their funding in the build-up to the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, a potentially crippling loss of several millions of pounds of Lottery support.

Hoey's backing - allied to that of Paralympic icon Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson in the House of Lords - will be welcomed by the chairman of British Basketball, Roger Moreland and British Swimming's chief executive David Sparkes, who have branded the cuts "a very dark and sad day for British sport".

"Basketball has a grassroots base bigger than any other British Olympic team sport," argues Moreland. "A funding system with nearly £350 million ($579 million/€418 million) available for elite sport cannot be working to the best of its ability, if it can leave sports like basketball behind."

Great Britain's synchronised swimmers have achieved all their performance indicators but are still losing UK Sport funding ©AFP/Getty Images

Sparkes says he finds the synchronised swimming decision "illogical" because the case presented to UK Sport for a duet to medal in Tokyo in 2020 was a strong one.

"How can an elite programme such as synchro, which has long been held by UK Sport as a model of world-class athlete development and leadership, that has achieved all of its performance indicators since it first received funding, have its funding removed just 12 months after it was enhanced?," he asks.

"It is a sport that has never failed to deliver on its performance promises and this decision beggars belief - it clearly highlights a fundamental flaw in the UK Sport approach.

"All the hard work over the past seven years is gone at the stroke of a pen. We set out our performance indicators for Rio and beyond but they've simply shrugged their shoulders and said 'we don't believe you can do it.' Yet Both synchro and water polo have an important role for women.

"I don't believe there are many performance directors who think this no compromise policy is right. You can't go through life without compromises. We all have to make them.

"I think the fundamental error made by UK Sport was not to undertake an in-depth review post-London.

"Blindly following this mantra means they have locked themselves into making some really harsh and unfair decisions.

"It is disappointing that the Minister is not prepared to show some leadership here on behalf of those Olympic sports which now face the real possibility of dying out.

"I have no doubt there are those both inside and outside UK Sport who believe this approach needs to be reformed. But the damage has been done."

Sparkes is right in suggesting that "no compromise" is even causing some embarrassment among some of those Olympic pursuits which have been richly rewarded with increments of several million pounds in the run-up to Rio 2016. Even sport's rich listers want fairer funding for the have-nots

UK Athletics chairman Ed Warner (left) wants a thorough debate on what UK Sport's "no compromise" policy means ©Getty Images

In a major development this week, one well-funded sport is to argue that a fairer system should now be introduced.

Ed Warner, the long-serving chairman of UK Athletics, says he is willing to join with those lobbying for a change of philosophy by the Government agency, suggesting it was imperative to commence a "wide-ranging and thorough debate" among all stakeholders about exactly what the no-compromise approach encompasses and what it should be for the Tokyo cycle, if a fairer system was to be effectively implemented in time for the Tokyo Games in 2020.

"My fear is that there won't be a blinkers-off, open-minded appraisal of how no compromise is applied in good time to potentially make a difference to those currently unfunded sports for Tokyo. " he told the Daily Telegraph.

"I also have a fear the debate will be too closed in terms of who has the debate and what its terms of reference should be.

"UK Sport should canvass opinion very widely, very thoroughly - now - and get the policy into the best possible shape in really good time so that it can make a difference in Tokyo.

"It makes me uncomfortable that you take a team to an Olympics and a Paralympics and the majority of sports are funded but you've got a number coming along on the plane who haven't got similar support.

"I just don't think that's really best for a team ethic and it isn't right for the development of Olympic and Paralympic ideals in the long-term right the way across all the sports."

Others are likely to follow in urging UK Sport to re-think their punitive programme in the light of the groundswell of opinion against a committed agenda which, as they point out, has taken Great Britain from 36th in the medals table in Atlanta in 1996 to third in London with 65 medals, with 66 targeted for Rio 2016.

Though with the Rio settlements already in place, this could not happen before the funding cycle for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

Nonetheless I hope that UK Sport's always engaging chief executive, the ex-netball czarina Liz Nicholl, now seen as the most powerful woman in British sport, will take the argument on board and demonstrate she is no hard-hearted Hannah completely wedded to a policy which so many believe is totally unsporting.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.