John Bicourt questions the return on investment into UK Athletics but sadly his article is characterised by poor research, incorrect facts and simply ill founded assertations.

Mr Bicourt begins by asserting that other sports such as football do not receive public monies. 

In fact, for the promotion of participation and grassroots competition, football (in common with other professional sports such as rugby union, rugby league and tennis) enjoys substantial public sector investment from Sport England, in excess of that received by athletics which does not enjoy the riches of these sports.

Mr Bicourt also misunderstands the roles and responsibilities of UK Athletics. Contrary to his view, we are not funded from the public purse to develop grassroots athletics and participation levels. This responsibility lies with the Home Country Athletics Federations and they are funded directly via their respective Sports Councils in pursuit of these objectives. 

UK Athletics’ role in this is to provide a strategic oversight and direction informed by the elected UK Members Council who represent not only the Home Countries but representatives from clubs, coaching and officials. Currently Sport England are investing (through England Athletics) over £2 million a year directly into club athletics via club coaching programmes and Athletics networks (including some clubs who are part of Mr Bicourt’s own self-appointed and unrepresentative body, the Association of British Athletics Clubs), which is then enhanced thanks to the support of UK Athletics sponsors McCain with a further investment of £1 million.

Where UK Athletics do contribute massively to grassroots athletics is through our primary sponsors Aviva. Over a period of 10 years Aviva have invested £18 milion into the promotion of athletics within British Schools through Star track, Sportshall, Elevating Athletics and more recently the sponsorship of all Home Country Schools Championships (track and field and cross-country).

UK Atheltics' only public money is provided by UK Sport and is correctly focussed on the elite end of our sport - to provide the best training facilities, the best coaching and the best support staff possible.

Again however, the numbers quoted by Mr Bicourt do not tally with reality. UK Athletics' current four year funding agreement with UK Sport see the sport awarded a total of £6 million per annum to fund our Olympic programme. Looked at another way this equates to just £375,000 per year per discipline, making athletics, by disciplines amongst the lowest funded of Olympic sports, and the sport offering perhaps the best value for money of all.

Bear in mind too, that the award is not, as Mr Bicourt asserts, restricted to a "tiny elite level".  Of that £6 million, 25 per cent of the sum every year is invested in ensuring we are able to take full British teams to all major track and fieldchampionships - not just senior teams but junior teams too.



Along with the track and field teams, others, such as the cross-country teams (junior, intermediate and senior men’s and women’s, all of whom returned with team medals from the European Championships in both 2008 and 2009, including Hayley Yelling (pictured) winning the women's race in Dublin last December), our British mountain running, fell running and ultra running teams are again funded from our commercial income and enjoy no public purse support at all.

Mr Bicourt makes a further comment regards public monies in administration - again the facts do not support his claim. All UK Athletics overheads are in fact paid for by our own commercially generated funds. Every penny of UK Sport investment goes directly to our World Class programme to which we ourselves contribute some 15 per cent through commercial funding.

So UK Athletics clearly demonstrates excellent value for money and is one of only a few sports from the Olympic family which raised its own commercial revenue to further invest in the sport which it is internationally recognised and charge to governing.

Finally Mr Bicourt asserts that at elite level the sport is not showing signs of progression. Once again, the facts do not support him. Consider the following statistics looking back at the number of UK medallists over the past three Olympic/World Championship cycles.

 

·         Sydney 2000/Edmonton 2001 – 6

·         Athens 2004/Helsinki 2005 – 12

·         Beijing 2008/Berlin 2009 – 16

 

And for evidence the positive trend is not just at the very top, let us consider top eight placings.

 

·         Sydney/Edmonton – 33

·         Athens/Helsinki – 27

·         Beijing/Berlin – 40

 

As recently as last week’s World Indoors, UK finished fourth in the medals table and fifth in the points table, ranking as the top European nation - a status the majority of British sports would give their right arm or leg for!

 

Last week also saw the publication of the results of the independent Active People survey (IPSOS Mori) which showed that participation in athletics has risen for the fourth consecutive six-month period - demonstrating clearly that our colleagues in England Athletics are also delivery against their remit.

 

So I am sorry Mr Bicourt, but I am afraid the facts do not support your position – I suggest the sport does not either.

Niels de Vos is the chief executive of UK Athletics