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UK Sport’s Major Events strategy to 2019 gives athletes and officials home Games experience


“The performance system has evolved


because of the good coaches that we’ve been able to attract, the enhanced fund- ing 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 in- troduced 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 be-


tween 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 trans- ferred 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 exche-


quer 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


Issue 1 2012 © cybertrek 2012


Chris Hoy celebrates winning the Men’s Sprint Final at the recent UCI Track Cycling World Cup


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 world- class programmes on a regular basis”. “Our no compromise approach to fund-


ing, 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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