Funding cut for Athletics in 2012 build up.

Athletes throughout the U.K must be worried with just a few short years before the 2012 Olympics in London.

After one of the worst performances ever by a U.K team in the Birds nest stadium in China, just one gold medal,the government has decided to focus its investments in the more succesful sports of late, Cycling, swimming and Rowing. Cycling has seen a 21.5% increase in funding. Rowings funding will be a massive £27m. Athletics meanwhile has seen a cut of some £1.5m, which has caused UK Athletics to cut down from 40 athletes, to 30.

Is it a smart move to downsize on funding in an area where we are already going downhill? surely it will just accelerate the problem.

Some athletes, like Jenny Meadows from Wigan, are already struggling for sponsorship for all the travelling and training required to be a success. This government funding cut is going to really have an impact on these athletes, its almost a recession, upon a recession. A map found at http://rmarsh2jn2053.blogspot.com/ shows just how far athletes have to travel to compete.

Athletics is the main sport in schools that is not football, so why cut down on the funding? We need role models to inspire young people into seriously taking up athletics.

With a decision like this the government is already cutting its chances of victory in arguably the most headline grabbing part of any olympics. What happens in the stadium is the centre stage.

These are difficult times for athletics competitors, and they do not need the government cutting their funding at all.

Article- Athlete individual sponsorship

http://rmarsh2jn2053.blogspot.com/

With the announcement that athletics was to get a 5% funding cut from UK Sport on Wednesday afternoon for the forthcoming Olympic games to be held here in London in 2012, there is more pressure than ever on individual athletes to find sponsorship to help cover for their careers.

Added to this the ever increasing problem of fuel and fuel prices, and with less money coming from the private sector because of the current international economic crisis, athletes are finding funding a lot more difficult to come by.

Wigan athlete Jenny Meadows is one of these athletes, a runner of international standard for the past ten years, she has had to travel all around the world to compete and with the ever increasing economic crisis, this is getting more and more expensive. It isn’t just the competitions, during the winter; athletes will often go abroad to train.

Over her career, Jenny has travelled 65,000miles around the world, and this naturally, costs money. A map showing just how far and wide Jenny has travelled, is found at http://rmarsh2jn2053.blogspot.com/ . Jenny has several sponsors to her name, such as JJB and allcom UK, but is often at a disadvantage to her southern compatriots, who are able to get many more sponsors in and around London, being situated in Wigan, a northern Lancashire town means sponsors are less easy to cross.

Of course many might wonder, that if the athletes cannot afford the transportation, that they should find another career, but that has never been an option for Jenny, who has “dreamt of going to Olympics since aged 7 so Beijing was very much the realisation of a lifelong dream”. Jenny made it to Beijing this summer, but the dream does not stop there, next year she plans to reach the European Indoor finals in Torino in Italy, and the World Championships finals in Berlin in Germany. It is also important of course, to bear in mind that much of athletes in come comes from personal sponsorships, just as much if not more so than prize money.

So sponsorship is vital, and with the reduction in Olympic funding and fuel prices, its more important than ever, which is why Jenny needs all the sponsors she can get to aid her to win the medals she is capable of for Britain.

(Image from IAAF.org)

Jenny Meadows Career Map

Here is a map of the destinations which Jenny Meadows has gone to during her career, the map clearly shows the distances involved and how much travelling is required, which of course costs money, and the further you travel, the more you pay, which is why sponsorship is so important to these athletes.


total miles travelled to destinations, 32,860miles,(x2)for the return trips = 65,720 miles travelled.



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