Funding cut difficult to stomach

Funding cut difficult to stomach

by tuan.blogger.hettien ~ Thursday, August 27, 2009

Ben Pipes is captain of the Great Britain men's volleyball team. He has been providing regular posts for 606 as the team build towards competing at an Olympics for the first time in 2012.

Here he reacts to the news that the sport faces a huge cut in funding from UK Sport in January.

When I heard volleyball would have its funding slashed, I had a sickening feeling. I don’t feel the need to go around bad-mouthing anyone. In fact, I couldn’t even say I was surprised. It was inevitable.



I just cannot see how you can argue that the progress we've made isn't enough to warrant the funding I think it was naïve to believe that sport in Britain was going to change overnight its culture of feeding the strong. It might sound cynical but the more I get into sport, the more I realise it's just a business.

The athletes, the people who run the federations, they’re the ones with the dreams and the optimism that they can fulfil those dreams.

The people who divvy up the money, they’re businessmen. What we’re doing doesn't mean anything to them because at the end of the day, they've got to give money to the successful sports so that they are seen to be doing well.

. We've gone from having no federation at all to having a proper structure.

We’ve been winning games and we’ve now got a world ranking. We've got 30 players that now play at a professional level. We've gone from zero to 120mph. I'm pretty sure that if you were going to measure progress, we must have made more than anyone because we started from nothing.

The main squad might be OK for now, but the young players who were looking to break into it have had their legs swiped from under them Don’t get me wrong. I support UK Sport 100%. You don't bite the hand that feeds you. They had to make decisions based on results. They missed out on £50m from the government and when you look at the economy, what did we expect?

What does it mean for us? Well, the London 2012 dream remains alive. But the plan for the money was to leave a legacy after the Games.

The main squad might be OK for now, but the young players based in Sheffield who were looking to break into it have had their legs swiped from under them. The coaching staff will have to go from full-time to working just in the summer.

But while we may not have the full support of the government or UK Sport, the world volleyball federation is backing us. They’ve told us we don't have to qualify for 2012 so at least we've got recognition from them.

And I remain positive. The worst thing about me is my optimism! There are people who tell me I can't keep doing this - but for me I'll always keep going. There’s nothing I can do about the money issues, so I’m focused on our world championship qualifiers at the beginning of January against Israel and Belarus.

Ben Pipes was talking to Caroline Cheese.

Read Ben's earlier 606 posts:
www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A34356...
www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A36153...
www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A38468...
www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A41119...

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