Olympics funding: Some Team GB sports told to expect cuts

A number of Great Britain's Olympic teams could lose their funding, despite the government recently announcing investment of £508m through to 2016.

Athletes or sports that are not expected to reach the Rio Games in 2016 will not receive any money.
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“We will fund any sport where we think there is a realistic chance of a medal in Rio or in the 2020 Games”Hugh RobertsonSports minister

Sports like handball and volleyball, which relied on host-nation places to compete in London, could be affected.

"There's no point funding sports that are not going to qualify," said sports minister Hugh Robertson.

The policy is known as 'no compromise'. Supporters say it is the fairest and most accountable way of channelling public finances into developing elite level athletes for competition.

Critics, however, insist that investment is needed to develop Britain's less popular sports to allow Britain to compete at international level.

"We will fund any sport where we think there is a realistic chance of a medal in Rio or in the 2020 Games. The base cutoff is if a sport does not qualify for an Olympics, that is very important," clarified Robertson.

"But remember that even if there are sports that don't attract funding, they can still get funding through Sport England and so on to develop their talent into a position where they will qualify for a Games in the future."

The British Volleyball Federation, who lost men's coach Harry Brokking on Tuesday through not being able to fund his salary, received over £3.5m from UK Sport in the build-up to London but did not meet all their performance targets.

And rower Katherine Grainger, who won a gold medal at London 2012in the women's double sculls and has three other Olympic silver medals, insisted that elite sports funding must be based on an athlete or team's ability to succeed.

"This is accountable money, public money," she said. "It has to be based on performance and it always has been.
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Pinsent: 'Money brings Olympic success'

"Every athlete comes in knowing that if they perform there's more chance of the support and the funding being there. If they don't, they're not going to get that. So no-one's surprised if the better they are the more support they'll get."

Baroness Sue Campbell, chair of UK Sport, said: "Investing in sport in an expensive business - world class success is expensive. We are investing the viewers' money, whether its coming from the government or Lottery.

"To invest large amounts of public money in people who quite frankly aren't going to get there is not good investment."

Former U.S. coach Greg Ryan denies shoving Hope Solo in '07

In her new book SOLO: A Memoir of Hope, U.S. women's soccer goalie Hope Solo makes a strong claim that former coach Greg Ryan shoved her during a meeting at the 2007 World Cup.

Ryan, now the women's soccer coach at Michigan, refuted Solo's claim in a statement released Tuesday.




CAPTION
By Joe Scarnici, Getty Images for USOC

What Life Holds For Athletes After The Olympics

Many athletes aspire to compete in the Olympic Games. Few ever achieve it.

Nancy Hogshead-Makar was ranked number one in the world for 200-meter butterfly at age 14. At 18, she was part of U.S. team that boycotted the Moscow Olympics, and at 22, she swam in five Olympic finals at the 1984 Los Angeles games, winning three gold medals and one silver medal.

After that, she retired. She was recently profiledin a piece for the sports site Deadspin.com.

She talks with NPR's Lynn Neary about her life after her athletic career.

[NPR.org]

SEA Games the new focus after Olympic games

Cambodia concludes its Olympic dream tomorrow with Sorn Davin in the women’s over-68kg taekwondo event, but sports officials are already looking ahead to their next major tournament – the 2013 SEA Games in Myanmar.

“Before we left for London, I held a meeting with all the sports federations and told them to start getting ready for the SEA Games,” National Olympic Committee of Cambodia Secretary-General Vath Chamroeun told the Post on Wednesday in an exclusive chat.

“The SEA Games is the main target for our national team and the first step to raising the country’s image,” he added.

“Thanks to our effort and hard work we have managed to improve sport in Cambodia, but we still need many things and more support from the government because we spend a lot for elite sport.

“It’s not like normal sport. Elite sport needs strong consideration for training and to provide everything for athletes and coaches. We must focus on the athletes. Right now, our support is not enough to motivate them 100 per cent.”

The former national team wrestler, who represented the Kingdom at the 1996 Atlanta Games, noted that the pre-Games training camps held in Beijing and the period granted in England to acclimatise had been very beneficial for their athletes.

“They enjoyed better conditions than before. We also helped encourage them a lot with promotional campaigns in Phnom Penh and online including Facebook, as well as a departure ceremony,” said Vath Chamroeun.

“Our athletes’ standard is a bit lower than others, but this was all about gaining experience. They do not participate often in international competitions and a major weak point is in mental strength. I told them, your performance here [in London] is your chance to test your level of technique and games spirit as you start to focus on the SEA Games.”

Phnom Penh casino, hotel and resort NagaWorld, one of the leading sponsors of the Cambodian contingent to London, also hailed the impact the Games had on the athletes and delegates.

“To us, this is a starting point for Cambodian sports. We need to start somewhere,” said Rajesh Kumar, vice president of Events, Promotion and Entertainment at NagaWorld.

“Obviously, we are quite sure that our athletes have received some form of exposure by competing at the Games and with fellow athletes from around the world.

“Despite our athletes not making it to the next rounds of their respective disciplines, we at NagaWorld are indeed still very proud of the team. The fact that some of our athletes have bettered their personal best records, speaks volumes.

“When an athlete competes against the world’s best, he or she is determined to push his or herself to the limits and this is the type of spirit that we are looking forward to. There are no boundaries to pushing oneself. In order to achieve this, our athletes need more international exposure, participate more in regional international events and we also need to look at developing the sport from a grassroots level,” he said.

“Hopefully we can sit down with the NOCC team once they are back from the London Games to map out the development plans for Cambodian sports, but we would also like to encourage more corporate bodies and sponsors to come on board with us to help elevate Cambodian sports to the next level,” he added.

Vath Chamroeun revealed the NOCC’s plan for the SEA Games was to focus on training and send as many athletes as possible to train abroad.

“Our sports facilities and quality of coaching are not good enough to help us challenge the other countries,” he said. “We have strong relationships with China and South Korea, so they are ready to help us. We will concentrate on sports we have won medals in already, such as wrestling, taekwondo, judo, tennis, vovinam and boxing.

“We will also look at some sports which have new talents that can help us reach our target of more than 10 gold medals. In previous Games, we got eight golds, so we’ve decided to set a minimum of 10 for the upcoming tournament. We will not be sending a lot of athletes. We have to look at quality, not quantity.”

Tom Daley & Olympics diving - a 'definite medal contender

Tom Daley will be "in medal contention" in Saturday's 10m platform diving final, former Olympic medallist Leon Taylor has predicted.

Daley, 18, finished fourth in the 10m synchro final last week alongside Great Britain team-mate Pete Waterfield.

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    “He knows not many athletes get a second chance, particularly at their home Games, and he is ready”Leon Taylor Olympic diving silver medallist

But Taylor, who took silver in Athens with Waterfield, has backed Daley to deliver in the individual final.

"Tom has been on the podium all year on the world stage, so is definitely in medal contention," Taylor said.

London 2012 Olympics: USA's Taylor Wins Gold in Men's Triple Jump

Christian Taylor of the US claimed gold in the men's triple jump at the London 2012 Olympics, after recording a seasonal best. Taylor jumped 17.81m in his fourth attempt to stay ahead of compatriot Will Claye (17.62m) and Italian Fabrizio Donato (17.48m), who finished with silver and bronze respectively.

Taylor's first two jumps were both disqualified, as was his sixth, but he kept his head to record 17.15m, 17.81m and 17.55m in his other three. Meanwhile, Claye jumped 17.54m for his second attempt to briefly take the lead. He followed that with jumps of 17.43m, 17.62m, 17.25m and 16.66m. Donato jumped 17.38m, 17.44m, 17.45m and 17.48m and saw his fifth and sixth jumps disqualified.

Taylor, the winner of the same event at the 2011 World Championships in South Korea, dedicated his win to Jonathan Edwards, the world record holder, claiming the retired British athlete had always been an idol.

"I was going for it. I said I was going to go for the world record in front of Jonathan Edwards. He's my idol. He's the best. I watched footage of him last night at the [2000] Sydney Olympics and Atlanta 1996 Games. I'm glad I got to put on a show. My confidence level is off the roof," BBC quoted Taylor as saying. British hopeful Phillips Idowu failed to make the finals after managing only 16.53m in the qualifiers. Still, even if he had qualified, Idowu's seasonal best of 17.31m would have only earned him fifth

U.S. women’s soccer team sought glory and found it

LONDON — The U.S. women’s soccer team members are not only fabulous drama queens, they also are a lusty singing group judging by the way they fairly shouted the national anthem that has become their personal soundtrack. These stagey, showy glory-seekers finally got what they wanted: their own place on one of the largest stages in the history of their sport. The camera flashes sparkled and lit up sold-out Wembley Stadium with brilliance, and standing in that shower of light, the Americans unabashedly donned white T-shirts with gold letters that said, “Greatness Has Been Found.” And it had.

 By the final whistle of a hard-charging 2-1 victory over Japan, goalie Hope Solo had lived up to every ounce of hype and earned every inch of her towering stardom, and so had the rest of them, led by their previously unsung midfielder, Carli Lloyd.

“We make it exciting,” Lloyd said. “And people like exciting.”

It was absolutely typical of this team that the game was dominated by a player who craved greater notice. Lloyd is a eight-year veteran, a workaday midfielder, a position “often overlooked,” she said. “I’m the engine, and I do the dirty work.”

She often felt limited in her role and overshadowed by the huge starpower of teammates such as Solo and Abby Wambach. “I wanted to prove everybody wrong, that I’m a special player,” she said.

So she played the scene-stealer, practically robbing her own teammate of the ball in a lunge for attention.