Sports Management Issue 1 2012 - Leisure Opportunities

UK Sport’s Major Events strategy
to 2019 gives athletes and
officials home Games experience
Chris Hoy celebrates winning the
Men’s Sprint Final at the recent
UCI Track Cycling World Cup
“The performance system has evolved
because of the good coaches that we’ve
been able to attract, the enhanced funding
we’ve had to develop the athletes and
the performance expertise that we’ve
aligned with the needs of sports,” she says.
According to Nicholl, the funding cycle
was key to the system’s implementation.
After Sydney 2000, the organisation introduced
four-year funding rounds, which
gave more stability to the performance
system. This meant that in the lead up to
Athens 2004, sports were able to recruit
and retain good coaches and support
staff, which Nicholl says “was a crucial
part of the sport system development”.
“There wasn’t much difference between
our athletes’ performance in
Sydney and Athens, where we came 10th
on the medal table for Olympics and
second for Parlaympics on both counts,”
she explains. “However, by the time we
won the bid to host the Games in 2005,
the government had more confidence in
what we were doing and gave us more
responsibility, some of which was transferred
from Sport England, alongside an
increase in our share of National Lottery
money. We then had responsibility for an
eight-year investment, instead of four –
from talent ID right through to podium.
“UK Sport was then given more exchequer
funding in the budget of 2006, to
support success in 2012 and investment in
every Olympic and Paralympic sport. ”
MISSION 2012
Nicholl gives particular credit to UK
Sport’s director of performance, Peter
Left: Liz Nicholl, Lord Seb Coe and
Baroness Campbell – chair of UK
Sport and the Youth Sports Trust
Keen, who is the architect of the
organisation’s ‘Mission 2012’ approach to
world-class system development. This, she
says, has “led to significant impact on the
way we work and the way sports work
with us while reviewing their own worldclass
programmes on a regular basis”.
“Our no compromise approach to funding,
which sports’ national governing
bodies (NGBs) now understand, is about
them getting the right support to the
right athletes for the right reasons,” she
says. “We require the NGBs to update us
with information about their programmes
as well as progress against agreed targets
three times a year via a rating system of
red, amber, green or gold.
“Gold means the sport is excelling and
there is good practice going on there
that could be shared with other sports.
Green means they’re on track and don’t
need our help. Amber means they know
where they are and are working at it,
and red means they need our help.
“The principle is that good practice
can address the issues that need help.
Between the gold and red we probably
have about 1,000 pieces of information
submitted to us, which our team focuses
on to inform their priorities. This really
brings to life the benefit of sports
working together.
According to Nicholl, this approach
allows the organisation to see recurring
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