sport-england-2016-17-annual-report-and-accounts

Sport England has advocated an insight-driven,
athlete-centred, inclusive approach to talent
development for some time. Our Backing
the Best scheme, carried out by SportsAid,
continues to tackle financial barriers by giving
bursaries to talented athletes from less affluent
families. In 2016-17 more than 70 athletes from
31 different sports received an average award
of up to £5,000 per athlete to help with kit,
training and competition costs.
The next cohort includes 95 athletes and
41 of these are re-nominations of athletes
already receiving support.
Help with funding
Support from Backing the Best has meant that
13-year-old Katie Crowhurst has been able to
train at a club with better facilities and longer
training hours, further away from home.
A member of British Swimming’s Para-Academy,
she competes in the S13 classification for
visually impaired athletes. Her Backing the Best
award has covered increased mileage costs
and the purchase of essential equipment.
Our Talented Athlete Sport Scholarship (TASS)
programme combines sport with education
to help more student athletes work with
professional coaches, nutritionists and other
practitioners. In 2016-17 we supported 440
athletes from 31 sports, across 27 education
sites. Around 12,000 student athletes also
benefit from the broader TASS network of
sports science provision, locally to them.
Golden opportunity
Winning at an international level remains
important. Team England will take the largest
and best prepared team ever to Australia’s
Gold Coast in 2018 to compete in the
Commonwealth Games.
We’ve backed Commonwealth Games
England with a £4 million investment, made in
October 2016. Together with money raised from
sponsorship, this National Lottery investment will
see athletes, coaches and support staff travel,
train, prepare and compete to match or beat
the medal haul from Glasgow 2014, where
Team England recorded its best-ever results.
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