Otters are definitely underfunded
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always losing out to the dam beavers…
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You’ve otter to be kidding
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Who will win the Tri Team Relay?
- France
- Germany
- GB
- Australia
- USA
- Some sneaky other country
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Julien Alfred … the margins she won by… reminds me of …
Shelly Anne retiring out of the blue from semis
Me thinks stuff is still happening
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I would love to see GB win again but suspect France has the best chance with a really strong team & on home turf.
Also expect team USA are starving hungry for a medal after disappointment in the men’s and women’s races. Their athletes are good enough I reckon.
In the GB camp, GTB suggested she was not quite where she was 4 years ago & Sam Dickinson looks like a great athlete but a bit of an unknown quantity at this level.
So I’m going with:
Gold: France
Silver: USA
Bronze: GB
But probably completely wrong 
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The mixed team relay swim familiarisation set for this morning was cancelled due to water quality…… here we go again.
I also see that it’s Potter and GTB for the women with Kate Waugh missing out.
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How do they qualify, if they’re training to a long term plan and not seeking employment?
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I guess it all comes down to the ‘10,000 hour rule’ hypothesis. When Gladwell got criticised for his analysis (forget which book off the top of my head), he pointed out that his real argument was that putting in the 10,000 hours (or more) needed funding from somewhere.
Only so many people have the drive to work in McDs (other menial evening jobs are available … ) and sleep on friends’ couches.
I don’t agree with the argument that the UK’s approach to sports funding is ideological, I think it’s entirely pragmatic.
If public opinion was of no concern, I think all the lottery money woiuld go to Royal Opera House type institutions. A lot of it still does, the sports funding is a way of keeping the majority of the population happy and prevent accusations of being elitist.
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To be fair i just like that a large number of “fringe” sports now give a career option and the chance for kids not from rich households, funded by Bank of Mum and Dad, to take part at an elite level. BUT i would prefer even more if more of that money was diverted to grass roots so that normal kids could do tri, swimming, even rowing. The vast majority of kids participating, outside of football, are still private school and middle class; more wealthy types.
Herne Hill Velodrome tries and is excellent in that regard; cheap, affordable cycling, but still requires a few quid for the arms race as you move up the rankings.
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Giving money to sports governing bodies is based on the theory that ‘the’ system is better than other options for outperforming other nations. To say that is sensible and realistic is, like many other policies, only valid because there is no
Other system in town.
It also contradicts the other policies which are rolled out by sport repeatedly such as inclusion, ltad, athlete centred coaching and other restricting practices
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Qualify for? Financial support? Or how do they qualify for the games?
Being on a long term plan is probably a necessity. But how it is structured is at the whim of the coaching system and athlete.
‘The dole’
AFAIK that’s now called Unemployment Benefit and claimants need a period of employment to qualify. There’s Job Seekers Allowance but beneficiaries need to actively seek work. So my point/query was that full time athletes probably qualify for neither
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UC (which supplements low income) needs a minimum work requirement unless you are LWCRA exempt.
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I would guess so. But there are few full time athletes and I would also guess most of those are governing body funded.
There’s only so much ‘helping out’ society and the system can do, whatever people’s dreams are. Another example is flying; loads of teenagers dream of being pilots for example. Your two options are qualifying for and getting through the military or commercial funded pilot systems, or you fund it privately.
In most cases people are weeded out via ‘aptitude’ & committment anyway. There needs to be a line between opportunity & pragmatism. We simply aren’t going to engineer a system where every youngest of 6 kids living on a council estate with questionable parenting has the exact same opportunity as a child from a ‘middle class’ family with supportive parents living in leafy Guilford.
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India really deserve to win this hockey
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It’s not just that we can’t offer that opportunity, it’s that we don’t know who to offer that opportunity to.
Using Tri as an example, the better kids at say early teens are grouped into academies from which the expectation is that they will develop sufficiently to join an elite pathway. However these are riddled with politics and speculative benchmarks which completely miss the purpose of both ltad and athlete centred coaching (methodologies that are perhaps at the centre of our poor middle and long distance running programmes). They are also woefully underfunded if the sport thinks this is the best model.
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Are there commercially funded systems any more?
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