Team GB achievements - underfunded

[Onheretoomuch]

Is it reasonable to say that Team GB do so incredibly well at the Olympics considering how much sport here is hugely under-funded particularly in comparison to China, USA, Australia, Japan etc.

I have so much respect for the athletes and am so proud. Bring on the next events!!

It just means that most of our athletes are from wealthy families. My DS sails; the RYA did some research this year and found that the average cost to the family of sailing on the youth pathway is 11k/pa. I bet gymnastics is similar and equestrianism much more.

If, as you say, they're doing so incredibly well then perhaps we're funding them to the right extent?

I had a friend at the European championships for her sport recently. She got a few medals.

The team needed to use GoFundMe for their travel and hotels.

I appreciate that is true of some sports but I’m not sure it applies to all. It makes you wonder what could be achieved if the funding was there for all talent.

I did wonder that and maybe for some athletes but then I feel other countries have proved that proper funding makes a big difference. We must surely be missing talent where the facilities, coaching and opportunities just isn’t available

its sad when you think of the money involved in football for example

Competitive sport is expensive.

Coaching fees, kit, travel, competition entry fees etc

I agree.

And it starts when DC join a sports club. Once they reach competition level and are mostly successful it's really expensive. Costs that are carried by the parents, friends and other family. That is until they get a sponsor, if ever.

Look at Bethany Shriever. She won gold at the last Tokyo Olympics for bmx racing. She was self funded as they pulled the funding for FEMALE bmx after the previous Olympics.

Football funds itself through ticket sales, merch, TV subscriptions etc.

If you are happy to spend thousands on a season ticket to watch people run around a track or do gymnastics then there will be more money in it.

I do pay to watch athletics and swimming which are rarely televised on terrestrial channels which would help.

Not sure where you've got this 'hugely underfunded' thing from. That may well be the case with China as nobody really knows how much they spend and the USA are unique due to the strength of the collegiate system there. But we spend significantly more per head of population than almost every other comparable country and our improvement in the medal table has been a direct consequence of that.

A bit of Google research gives a funding figure for Australia of around £52m over the last Olympic cycle and for Japan, £32m. The equivalent figure for the UK in the same period: £245m.

It depends on the sport too. US rapper Flavor Flav is sponsoring the US water polo teams for the next 5 years after reading about how they all had second and/or third jobs in order to support their sporting ambitions.

IIRC the US paralympions do not get investment that you’d expect from a rich, sporty country like the US.

And the alternative is, once again, the tax payer picks up the bill. £22b in debt apparently, so where is the additional sport funding going to come from?

I thought that the UK does particularly well in sports that require lots of kit. Horses, bikes and boats. I'm not suggesting that all of the UK competitors are well funded or rich, but there's an obvious disparity between countries and the UK is at the richer end of that.

The opening ceremony boat parade was quite a stark reminder of the inequality in sport funding. There were countries with similar populations, but one would have 4 competitors and the other 100. Poorer countries have competitors in sports like judo and running, where the kit requirements are lower.

I wasn’t thinking specifically funding for the Olympics, just sport in general. I’ve been to Japan, US and Australia and the facilities and clubs/coaching opportunities for children far exceed ours.

I wasn’t comparing us to the poorer nations

A large percentage of UK funding comes from the national lottery. I wasn’t saying the government should pay any more. I was saying I’m proud of Team GB.

I thought that athletes got lots of money from sponsors. They get paid to have the sponsor's name on part of their kit etc.
I'd rather taxes were spent on the winter fuel payment than on athletes who can get other sources of cash.

Not all of them attract sponsorship though, especially those in the less popular sports

I think one of the problems is spotting talent.

My dc at state school did PE as in 8 weeks of lessons of one sport then onto another.

That was 16 lessons. The first lesson was always non-practical talking about safety and equipment. The last lesson was always fun/sorting out going onto the next lesson. There was also a very high chance that at least one lesson would be rained off/have a trip/teacher away. So I'll call that 13 lessons. 13 hours.
Except realistically with changing maximum of 40 minutes a lesson, so let's call that 9 hours.
In 9 hours, with a group of keen pupils and a specialised teacher... I doubt many would get to the stage of either thinking "this is fun. I want to do more" or "I'm quite good at this."
In 9 hours in a lot of sports you're not really even at the stage of being able to do a proper game.

So you're looking at getting talent from out of school clubs. And barring a few, the children need a parent who is willing to take them, and pay for equipment.

So by this point, you're really reducing the number of children you're looking at to discover talent to a relatively small percentage. Even if you find talent in the club, a parent may say they're not interested (yes, I've seen that, with a coach offering free lessons because they saw huge talent).

From a non-sporty child's prospective (as me and my girls were) the 8 weeks then move on is lovely. Not too much is expected. Any hated sports are over and done with quickly.
But from a sporty child who has potential but not got parental support to do it outside school, it's not going to inspire them enough, or is someone going to coach them to find they're quite good.
My dad was the latter. He is very sporty, and at his secondary modern they did a term of cricket, a term of football and a term of rugby. He was captain of certainly the latter two, and I think played for the county for them all. His parents could not afford the bus fair to get there so he used to walk several miles to play. They certainly couldn't have paid for equipment or club fees.
I sometimes wonder whether if he'd had the money for proper coaching and equipment etc how far he'd have gone. Today it's even harder.

But then you're conflating 2 separate things. 'Community sport' (for want of a better term) which I agree isn't particularly well resourced in this country and elite level sport which very much is.

To stir the pot a bit. Playing a sport is something, essentially, we do for entertainment. Plus a bit of public health. Being part of the rare band that set world records and win medals has little impact on public life. If we make winning Olympic medals the measure of achievement, and invest hugely in the tiny group of people who might be able to do that, aren't we getting it wrong? Similarly, if we have kids' football clubs overrun by parents hoping that they're going to raise the next Premier League superstar and benefit from that kind of mega salary, aren't we getting that wrong as well?

Maybe the money would be better spent on providing grassroots opportunities for people to engage in physical activity for fun and well-being? If someone is talented and committed enough to compete potentially at international level, that's up to her or him.

I love sport, I enjoy watching (at all levels) but I struggle with the idea of being proud that somebody who happened to come from the same island as me ran / swam / rowed / cycled faster than people who came from different places. I'll make exceptions for the athletes I know personally, but that's based on a personal relationship, not a nationality thing (not all of those athletes are British anyway). But I gain more satisfaction from my own (entirely mediocre) performance as a runner, because what I achieve there is about my effort rather than anyone else's.

Parents who can fund their kids makes the biggest difference. My child does a competitive sport at a national level it’s expensive before she got accepted into the top squad the head coach basically had to ask I if we could afford it. So yes they have a lot of natural ability plus they are very coach able but if we couldn’t fund it they wouldn’t be as good as they are. We too have had go fund me appeals so her squad mates could represent their country at international level.