With UK Sport’s funding set to fall, we need an honest debate about which sports to fully support – and whether medals benefit the nation
It is a question that could soon sound as familiar as a BBC commentator getting overexcited about a potential curling medal. “Why spend a huge amount of money on winter sports,” asked the interrogator, “when we are not a winter sport nation?” Yet when it was uttered, at a press conference to announce Britain’s medal target of five in Pyeongchang, you could have heard a pin drop.
That was because the person doing the asking was Katherine Grainger, the new chair of UK Sport, which supplies – and denies – funding to Olympic teams. And the organisation’s chief executive, Liz Nicholl, the driving force behind the organisation’s “no compromise” medal philosophy, was the one getting the grilling.
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