If the cycling body can expect further battering until the truth is laid bare, UK Sport may be charged with forsaking diligence in its obsession with medalsWhen lawyers for UK Sport drew up the contract for British Cycling’s £30.6m funding agreement after London 2012 one clause seemed innocuous enough: “You shall fully communicate and provide information to us regarding the outcomes of the Peter King review.”Four years on, however it is the basis for frosty skirmishes between Britain’s most successful Olympic sport and the body whose millions have allowed it to thrive. Related: UK Sport accuses British Cycling of a ‘complete lack of transparency’ Continue reading...
With the funding body coming under increasing financial pressure, sports failing its podium test are being made to pay a heavier priceWhen Gail Emms was asked about UK Sport’s decision to reject the desperate pleas of seven sports, including GB Badminton, to be funded for the Tokyo Olympics, she was poetic in her response. “It’s like someone just taking your heart, your emotions, your dreams and basically tearing them up,” said Emms, a badminton silver medallist at the 2004 Olympics, with a sigh.But UK Sport has a tin ear for poetry. Its language is cold, hard, medal-economics. Once it had decided in December that badminton – along with archery, fencing, goal ball, table tennis, weightlifting and wheelchair rugby – had...
When Les Bleus face England at Twickenham, imagine a pack with terrifying power and a clever set of midfield backs, running instinctively brilliant linesHere are some names to conjure with: Serge Blanco, Denis Charvet, Philippe Sella, Didier Codorniou, Jean-Baptiste Lafond. Here are some more: Jean-Pierre Rives, Walter Spanghero, Gérard Cholley, Robert Paparemborde, Jean-Pierre Bastiat. All retired players from a distant era, perhaps, but simply writing them down is enough to make you want to rise instantly from your desk, sing La Marseillaise at full volume and launch a hunt for a live cockerel.For those of us from the opposite side of the Channel there was never any doubt about the most breathless fixture in the old Five Nations. True, whenever...
Judy Guinness relinquished a foil gold medal in Los Angeles by pointing out judging errors – but 84 years later her sport has been stripped of Games fundingIn the run-up to last summer’s Rio Olympics, British Fencing announced a new “brand identity” – a redesigned logo, in other words. Rendered in slanted sans-serif capitals in red and blue against a white background, the governing body’s title was now marked by three dramatic oblique slashes, as if inflicted by a duellist’s sabre. Unfortunately, however, these wounds have proved to be neither merely symbolic nor superficial. Related: UK Sport funding axe ‘catastrophic’ for badminton, says chief executive Continue reading...
There was much to feel good about in Manchester on Monday but the questions faced by cycling – the sport that most embodies the great British medal rush – after recent revelations continue to dampen the moodBritain’s triumphant Olympians and Paralympians partied beneath sunny skies as they deservedly took the acclaim of the crowds in Trafalgar Square.But during the first leg of their 48‑hour victory lap on Monday, it was not just the traditional Manchester weather that threatened to rain on Team GB’s parade but the bad vibes emanating from the structure in the east of the city that up to now has been championed as the symbol of all that is good about the great National Lottery-fuelled charge up...