Athletes Missing the Point on Lottery Funding?

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I was distressed to read this week that Andy Turner, the British 110m hurdler has decided to appeal against his lottery funding. When UK Athletics start making the tough decisions that they can't avoid if they are to produce the goods in London, the athletes start whinging to the press.

Turner strikes me as a decent international athlete, but he's not World Class. Stating that he'd need to find a sponsor or work part-time he complained, "It's going to be tough but I have to do it as I've still got dreams of winning a medal in the Olympics."

You know what, maybe he will, but it doesn't strike me that he's demonstrated his that to date.

Meanwhile many other athletes that narrowly miss out will accept that a ruthless focus on the athletes that can bring back medals is what this country needs, if it is to build on the success of Beijing.

	Author:	robrobson (robrobson's profile, robrobson's blog)
	Posted On:	Monday, 17th November '08, 7:55pm
	Tags:	Coaching, Running and Sprinting
	Comments:	1 comment, go to comments

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Comments

Athletes need more support

mattrussell

Hi, I've just joined here, but I thought I would comment on this. I don't condone any sort of complaining by athletes, but it seems to me that British athletes need more support these days, not less, so we can build a strong team for 2012. Athletes at the top level need to be able to train full time in order to improve and become world class. Having said that I can think of several athletes who achieved world class times while holding down jobs -- Peter Elliott, Ron Hill and Steve Jones come to mind.

Running & stuff
http://fugespeaks.blogspot.com

Submitted 51 weeks 3 days ago by mattrussell