The battle for UK Sport’s soul has raged for years but it has been a one-sided skirmish. The policy of “no compromise” – which rewards successful sports and rips funding from those that fail – has always triumphed. Why, its supporters argue, tamper with a system that has taken Britain from 38th in the medal table at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 to second at Rio 20 years later?
Perhaps. But slowly the debate is shifting. There have been too many queasy reports of a culture of fear inside British sports; too much unease about a system that denies the likes of wheelchair rugby any help; even some soul-searching inside UK Sport about what the organisation, and the funding of elite sport, should look like in the future.
Now Ed Warner, the former chair of UK Athletics, has thrown a firecracker into the room by suggesting the system is “bloated”, has become complacent on lottery funding and needs a “radical overhaul”. Controversially he has also claimed there are a “number of sports who are not as lean as they should be but it hasn’t suited UK Sport to cut their funding because it then undermines the whole philosophy which is win more medals, get more money”.
Warner believes that status quo can no longer hold given the widespread assumption that the government will no longer iron-clad UK Sport’s funding after the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. He is far from alone in that assessment. Fresh ideas will need to be explored, interrogated, perhaps even integrated.
Crucially Warner, who has been an interim chair of the British Equestrian Federation and British Basketball, has proposed how to square what has long seemed an impossible circle: finding a way to give all Olympic sports a baseline level of funding without massively affecting Britain’s medal chances. His suggestion is Olympic sports generate 25% of their finances themselves after Tokyo 2020 through commercial, sponsorship or members’ fees – a figure that would grow to 50% by 2028.
Warner says the plan would immediately save £18m a year, enough to help the 12 Olympic sports not currently funded by UK Sport. As he points out, it should not be that hard given the flab in the system. “We have got to the point where some big sports don’t know how to spend the money they are getting from UK Sport,” he says. “They are funding too many people.”
Warner, whose book ‘Sport Inc’ gives a hard-hitting account of what goes on behind the scenes in elite sport, says UK Sport is losing sight of the bigger picture. “For me it should be more about making the nation proud in the right way – whether that is winning medals, setting PBs, or a team unexpectedly getting out of group stages.”
The word inside UK Sport is that the venerable Liz Nicholl, the long-standing chief executive, and the formidable Chelsea Warr, the director of performance, are not persuaded by the need for change.
Sebastian Coe, who led London’s successful 2012 Olympics bid and is now president of the IAAF, also believes the system is largely working. “I think there are very few occasions in the history of the nation where you can genuinely point to something that you are better at than anywhere else in the world,” he says. “So I don’t want to cede that territory.”
The great unknown is where Dame Katherine Grainger stands. Grainger, who has made an overwhelmingly positive impression since taking over as chair of UK Sport last year, is a product of the system, having won five Olympic rowing medals in a glittering career. Yet she has also hinted at being open to the possibility of reform.
A public consultation about the future of UK Sport finishes on 19 August. If there are calls for change, will Grainger be bold enough to wield the scalpel?