Funding for young athletes

What makes a champion? It’s a unique formula for every athlete of course but one thing for sure is that it takes a lot of hard work, and the hard work begins long before you reach any podium. In this guest blog, Simon Worsfold, Communications Manager at SportsAid talks about its work in getting young athletes from parks to podium places.

Research by Repucom and Nunki shows that most young people who are considering sport as a career took it up by the time they were ten. As teenagers they will already be finding an extra 15 hours a week to train and compete on top of their school work. And most will be travelling anywhere from 150 to 250 miles a week just to train and compete, racking up annual expenses of around £6,000.

That is a lot of money for any family to find, and at that stage of an athlete’s development, there is no income or any fantastic rewards for what they do, so it all comes off their own back. Simple, hardworking, commitment. All given at a time of their life when their friends are going out more, distractions are everywhere, and their sport is starting to make ever greater demands of them. So there is a real risk that some of this talent could be lost.

For more than 60 sports, and for nearly 40 years, a reliable solution has been to work with SportsAid, a national charity which raises money to help emerging athletes who are not yet on Lottery or TASS funding and who are still too young, in most cases, to get their own sponsorship deals. Every autumn these sports nominate an agreed number on their talent pathways to SportsAid, which then uses its resources to fundraise for them. Major SportsAid partners include energy firm SSE, Jaguar-Landrover, the GLL Sport Foundation, Prudential, MyLotto24 and many other organisations, large and small, who all support a certain number of athletes through SportsAid each year.

For the rest, the charity has an excellent track record of fundraising – distributing £1.5m in 2014 for example to more than 1,400 athletes – backed up by a long-standing relationship with Sport England. But as any charity will tell you, raising this money never gets any easier. For SportsAid, like anyone else, it is an ongoing challenge.

Without exception, every athlete who receives this support from SportsAid says it is helpful or even essential to their sport. And the sports themselves – again without exception – say they could not replace this funding for emerging talent if it was not available.

At London 2012, almost two-thirds of Team GB and ParalympicsGB were former, and in a few cases current, recipients of SportsAid’s support. Over the years the charity has helped many of British sport’s biggest names, from Tanni Grey-Thompson to Tom Daley. One of the early recipients was Matthew Pinsent who said, “I received the first of my SportsAid awards as a junior in 1987. Quite simply, without the money I would have remained an aspiring young sportsman, but with it I became a world and Olympic champion. That's how much SportsAid means to me.”

So why have more people not heard of SportsAid? Perhaps you have, but the charity is still often talked of as the best kept secret in British sport – in part because it often works behind the scenes with programmes that have tended to take more of the headlines, such as the Jaguar Academy of Sport, SSE Next Generation and, during London 2012, the Lloyds Bank Local Heroes scheme. It is also perhaps because unlike many of the more local schemes out there, there is no open application process for SportsAid funding – everything comes through the sports’ governing bodies, which is how SportsAid ensures the right athletes are helped at the right time.

Another challenge, which not only faces SportsAid but the athletes themselves, is the perception that anyone wearing a GB vest is in some way already funded. Indeed, often the shirt itself will tell you that they are, but the reality for many of them, especially at the junior level, is that they – or more often their parents – are funding the whole thing themselves. From airfares to meals to physio sessions to competition entry fees it all comes from the bank of mum and dad, with no prize money or any real pay-offs to look forward to at all until many years down the line.

And that’s just for the bigger sports. For many it will remain a labour of love and that is why, for almost 40 years, SportsAid has stepped in to make a difference. For many of these aspiring athletes, what is even more important than the money itself is simply the recognition that they are on the right path.

“SportsAid has been essential to me,” said 400m hurdler Stanley Livingston after receiving a SportsAid award last year. “Without it the financial pressure would have eventually become overwhelming and I may have stopped competing.”

Fifteen-year-old Olivia-Mae Cameron competes in disability swimming and added, “I really appreciate the support that SportsAid have given me, it has not only helped me financially by allowing me to attend specific one-to-one training but also boosted my confidence in the knowledge that I am being recognised for my achievements in my sport.”

Do you know someone who could support SportsAid’s fundraising efforts? Could you help to raise awareness about the charity’s work? Contact Graham Dandy at SportsAid on 020 7273 1977 or email graham@sportsaid.org.uk.

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