A report into the corrosive impact of UK Sport and Sport England into Athletics THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM British Athletics has been in decline for ten years, and throughout that time those charged with reversing the trend have avoided mentioning the Elephant in the room. The Athletics Elephant is an aggressive influence that distracts the sport from its core purpose, which is the provision of competition, which allow the athletes to funnel themselves upwards. The Athletics Elephant corrupts the environment by promising money then stipulating that all the money must be spent on the Elephant's own priorities. It is the money distributed by the Elephant in the room, that pays the wages of over 150 athletics personnel, each with a job title which allows the Elephant to tick a box. The Elephant says "You will not talk about me in negative terms, and you will not talk about me without first getting my permission". The Elephant insists that he is entitled to be present at all meaningful athletics meetings both sporting and administrative. The Elephant may inspect the office records of UK Athletics whenever it chooses. The Elephant demands compliance, whilst at the same time insists it should not be held accountable for the corrosive influence it exerts. It gets worst when one appreciates that Athletics has two Elephants in the same room. UK Sport and Sport England are the Elephants in the room. Information just released under the Freedom of Information act brings into sharp focus how these two money rich Elephants have poisoned the Athletics environment since they created UK Athletics in 1997. Let no apologist for UK Sport or UK Athletics get away with blaming obesity, computer games, selling of playing fields, popularity of football, bad coaching, the size of the opposition, or create any other smokescreen to hide behind. British children and young adults are as dynamic, explosive and motivated today as they ever have been. Each year over thirty 13/16 year old boys and girls impact the top twenty domestic all time rankings, over all athletic events. Young adults aged 17 to 20 are competitive at the international championships. It is only after they come under the influence of UK Athletics and UK Sport, that standards nose dive. Christine Ohuruogu's gold medal win at the Osaka World Championships, within days of returning from a one year ban, demonstrates that the support of UK Sport and UK Athletics has no positive impact on who achieves success at major championships. The first section discusses UK Sport's funding agreement with UK Athletics, and highlights the way that UK Sport have taken charge of athletics, in the quest for personal glory, and in doing so, have undermined its core value of fairness. The second section looks into Sport England's funding terms with UK Athletics and highlights how the grass roots of the sport are being pressured into becoming mass participation "keep fit" clubs, at the expense of being dedicated athletic clubs. UK SPORT’S FUNDING AGREEMENT UK Sport (Responsibility for high performance) On 31st July 2007, After representations under the Freedom of Information Act, UK Sport released the UK Athletics Funding Agreement for the period from 2005 to 2009. Click Here to download the Funding Agreement. (This is a very large PDF file of 11 megabytes, so a broadband connection is required). For the period from 1st April 2005 to 31st March 2009 UK Sport have promised UK Athletics £8.8 million to fund "World Class Performance" and "World Class Operations". The terms of the funding agreement between UK Sport and UK Athletics gives an insight to the corrosive nature of UK Sport, and the unquestioning obedience of UK Athletics. Because UK Sport are distributing public money, they are required to set targets. Described as "Key Performance Indicators" (KPI's), these targets are a double edged sword which can also highlight decline. However because decline will reflect badly on UK Sport, decline is not an option. The KPI's are designed to be easily manipulated. For Example, UK Sport dictate that UK Athletics must increase the "number/percentage" of athletes winning medals at major Championships and reaching finals (Page 22). It would have been more honest to fix the number of athletes attending major Championships and increase the number of medals won or finals achieved. By targeting percentage improvements UK Athletics can manipulate the KPI by reducing the size of the team, which is exactly what they have done in Osaka at the expense of the throwers. This policy is harmful in the long term to all areas of the sport, including the major international championships who are deprived of the participation of an important athletics nation. Disingenuous KPI's together with an array of other conditions passes control of athletics to UK Sport whilst UK Athletics exist merely to shield the quango from responsibility for failure. Examples of the control wielded by UK Sport are sprinkled throughout the funding agreement: UK Athletics will not discuss any aspect of the award without prior consultation with UK Sport (Page 8). UK Sport will have access to inspect UK Athletics premises and records at any time (Page 9). UK Sport have the right to attend all UK Athletics Board Meetings, Management Committee Meetings or similar meetings, and will be provided with the notice of such meetings, and agenda and the minutes. (Page 10) Athletes will be required to enter into a legally enforceable contract based on a template provided by UK Sport (Page 11) UK Sport have the right to attend squad sessions (Page 24) UK Sport will monitor the media coverage of every Lottery funded athlete, and require that every athlete acknowledges Lottery Funding at least once per year. (Page 24) UK Sport and UK Athletics will keep the content of the plan confidential and will not disclose any of its content to a third party (Page 19) We are a sport of Running, Jumping and Throwing. What on earth can be confidential in such a sport? At a time when athletics needs its governing body to act as a protector of its values, it is stuck with UK Athletics who have a funding policy which favours one athlete over another, and adopts a selection policy for International Championships, which is almost entirely subjective. UK Athletics must be the most unnecessary and counter productive body in sport. UK Sport have distorted the priorities of athletics by imposing its own social agenda onto the sport. What is a section like "Equality" (page 16) doing in a "High Performance" funding agreement? No sport in the UK has expressed the values of equality more emphatically than Athletics, and it does not need to be lectured on such matters by a quango. The slippery nature of UK Sport is crystallised in the funding agreement in Section 23 on page 18. Under the heading of "Exclusion of Liability /Indemnity", this clause can be paraphrased as "UK Sport will not be held liable for any loss or damage caused by compliance with any part of this Funding Agreement". The next paragraph emphasises the point by requiring that "where UK Sport might be held liable by a third party, then UK Athletics will assume such liability on behalf of UK Sport". UK Athletics are no more than a front for UK Sport which allows the quango to pull the strings whilst avoiding the responsibility. The belief that by investing in the pinnacle of the sport it is possible to elevate the elite performers away from the rest, is complete nonsense. If UK Sport were to focus their attention on building affordable facilities, and allow the athletics community to run the sport, standards in depth would again start to rise. SPORT ENGLAND’S MEANINGLESS KPI’S Elephant Number 2: Sport England: As part of the 2006/2007 funding agreement Sport England required that UK Athletics achieve a set of targets. These targets, or Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) set at 1st April 2006, were to be achieved by 31st March 2007. Using the Freedom of Information act, a request was made to Sport England to declare the outcome of the targets. Click Here to download Sport England's reply dated 10th August 2007. (This is a large PDF file of 1.5 megabytes, so a broadband connection is required). Participation Target set by Sport England on 01/04/06 to be achieved by 31/03/07 To establish how many people participate in athletics using data collected from Sport England's "Active People" Survey. Declared Outcome A sample of 350,000 people were used in the "Active People" survey, and it was determined that the number of adults (aged 16+) participating in athletics at least once a month was measured at 244,481. The figure for running/jogging was measured at 1,872,819. Comment Sport England's findings have no relevance for competitive athletics, including competitive road running. Participating in Athletics once a month, has as much to do with the sport of athletics, as going to the seaside has to do with the sport of swimming. To measure participation you need only look at the results from an established athletics competition, and compare the number of competitors with previous years. This has the added benefit of being accurate beyond question, and taking 5 minutes. Clubmark Target set by Sport England on 01/04/06 to be achieved by 31/03/07 The number of clubs to have achieved Clubmark status to increase to 150. Declared Outcome The target was revised to 120. UK Athletics exceeded the revised target by reporting 123 clubs as having achieved the Clubmark status. Comment Clubmark is the main mechanism used by Sport England for imposing a social agenda onto athletics clubs. If enough clubs attain Clubmark status, it will be possible for Sport England and UK Athletics to imply that those clubs who chose not to engage with the Clubmark bureaucracy, are "unfit for purpose", therefore unfit for children, unfit for insurance, unfit to be promoted by local authorities and unfit to use Council facilities. Sport England describe this regulation of community athletics clubs as raising standards. Quango's who change their target's after they have failed to achieve them, in order to create the illusion of having succeeded, can teach athletics nothing about standards. For Sport England, the social agenda has become the objective of the sport, and athletics is merely the mechanism for delivering it. Club Membership Target set by Sport England on 01/04/06 to be achieved by 31/03/07 A baseline figure for Club Membership to be established. Declared Outcome A baseline figure was established at 96,000 Club Members as of 31st March 2007. Comment In September 2005 the Foster Project Board, funded by Sport England, conducted a ballot of athletic clubs. Voting was scaled based on each club's declared membership. Clubs with up to 200 members had 1 vote, and clubs received an extra vote for every additional 100 members, up to 5 votes for clubs with over 500 members. Ballot Papers were sent to: 993 clubs with under 200 members 283 clubs with between 200 and 299 members 121 clubs with between 300 and 399 members 53 clubs with between 400 and 499 members 33 clubs with over 500 members If we exclude the 993 clubs with under 200 members, and just count the minimum declared members from the higher bands, club membership can be calculated as 130,600. Clearly Sport England have grossly under-represented club membership. It is presumed this distortion will allow Sport England to claim credit for increases in future years thereby creating the illusion that they have been a positive force in the sport. Furthermore On 12th July 2007, the Road Running Leadership Group, which is chaired by Ed Warner, the UK Athletics Chairman, announced that "A new online Running Club will be created for the increasing majority of race entrants who are not members of clubs". It is presumed that membership of this fictitious club will be used to inflate future club membership numbers. Such cynical manipulation of KPI's does a disservice to athletics. Coaches Target set by Sport England on 01/04/06 to be achieved by 31/03/07 The number of active and qualified coaches delivering instruction within athletics to increase by: 1,000 level 1 coaches 500 level 2 coaches 150 level 3 coaches 50 level 4 coaches Declared Outcome No baseline for coaches was in place for this target, so it has not been possible to report progress on this target. UK Athletics has reported 6,760 qualified coaches active within the sport as of 31 March 2007. UK Sport do not have a breakdown of this figure by level. However, now that a baseline figure has been confirmed, it will be possible to measure this target in future years. Comment It is farcical that a body responsible for distributing huge sums of money can set a target to increase the number of coaches, without realising they have no way of establishing whether the target has been reached. This will not surprise those who have watched how coach education has evolved from being a method for sharing athletic training ideas, into becoming a tool allowing coaches to qualify for negligence liability insurance cover. The number of clubs counted by the Foster Project Board in September 2005 was 1,483. The declared 6,760 coaches, equates to every club in the country potentially having 4.55 qualified athletics coaches, including each of the tiny road running clubs. If we choose to take seriously Sport England's declared 96,000 club members, then we have a qualified coach for every 14.2 members. Such figures are nonsense. If the figure of 6,760 coaches can be verified, it is likely that the newly qualified coaches are school teachers padding out their CV, and not actually delivering any meaningful athletics opportunities on a year round basis. One of reasons for the demise in athletics coaching was when UK Athletics put an expiry date onto all coaching licenses in response to the government policy encouraging "life long learning". The theory was that athletics coaches, horrified that their coaching license had expired, would rush off in search of further education to requalify, thereby bringing themselves upto date in the latest coaching techniques. The reality is that many experienced Coaches, did not have the time to requalify and even if they had, UK Athletics did not have the capacity to test them every two years, so the system collapsed. Volunteers Target set by Sport England on 01/04/06 to be achieved by 31/03/07 To increase the number of volunteers actively supporting the sport by 1%. Declared Outcome UK Athletics has not reported a figure for volunteers active within the sport. Comment It is unclear how Sport England differentiate between a coach, an official, a team manager, a senior athlete, or the parent of a young athlete who helps out, and a "Volunteer". Perhaps that is why UK Athletics have simply not bothered to report a figure. Athletics volunteers are not this mythical group of people constantly with their hand in the air volunteering because they have nothing better to do. They are individuals who step in to fill a void, often reluctantly, because they themselves perceive the job to be important. They do several jobs in a voluntary capacity, and will impact the previous KPI's as a Participant, a Club Member, a Coach and a Volunteer. The setting of a target for the number of volunteers in the sport gives an insight into how little understanding Sport England and UK Athletics have of the sport. Such a lack of understanding by UK Athletics and Sport England is infinitely more worrying than the failure to count the number of volunteers. Click Here to down load this report as a printable PDF file.