Days of big payouts numbered

Athens Review Reaction:  The days of copious and liberal funding to Irish Olympic athletes are now over. Yesterday's publication of the Athens Review included a strong recommendation for an urgent overhaul of the way money is spent on elite athletes, and the Irish Sports Council is already taking that on board.

Unlike the Sydney review, where so many of the recommendations were concerned with the question of "why can't we all just get along?" the Athens document is specifically concerned with the actual performance at the Olympic Games. What is clear is the funding process in the Olympic build-up is still not achieving its targets.

Other issues are addressed, and the National Coaching and Training Centre (NCTC) in Limerick comes out of the review badly. There is also a call to the Irish Sports Council to pursue the establishment of an Institute for Sport, most likely to be based at the Abbotstown development, while the Olympic Council of Ireland has been advised to appoint a chief executive officer.

Although firmly focused on achievable targets, the review suggests that Ireland aims for between six and nine finalists at each Games, where a strike rate of around 30 per cent could produce between two or three medals. And now more than ever Ireland needs to focus on the athletes that might make finals, rather than the athletes that might simply qualify. As a result, smaller teams are expected.

As perhaps the main stakeholder in the review, the Irish Sports Council came under the most scrutiny - but escaped relatively unscathed. Not surprisingly, its chief executive John Treacy warmly welcomed the review.

"I think it's a very fair report," he said. "The Sydney review proved there was a huge amount of noise in the system, a lot of people complaining. The Athens Review shows that a lot of the noise has been taken out of the system. And now we're talking about quality services going forward, while also being a lot more demanding of ourselves.

"So a lot of progress has been made in a very short period of time. The high performance unit has put a lot of initiatives in place with governing bodies over the last two and half years. But like Britain, I think we have made some mistakes.

"Leading into Athens we had to work from the top down, and invest in the athletes we had at the time."

Now, there will be a major overhaul of the way money is handed out to athletes under the high-performance carding scheme: "From now on we will be taking a longer-term view. We'll be looking at the top athletes and at the developing athletes, and will continue to invest in the organisations, but in terms of funding we will be monitoring the progress of athletes much more closely, and we will be more demanding in our criteria.

"Next week's carding scheme announcement will see some reflection of that, but the 2006 grants is where the real change will happen."

Such a drastic overhaul creates the risk of turning elite athletes away from their sport, as they struggle to make ends meet. Treacy disagrees. "Well, we are talking about Olympic sports here. But there are two pieces to this from the Sports Council's perspective. The participation element is also hugely important to us.

"The athletes need to realise that not everyone is going to go to the Olympic Games. We spend 17.5 per cent of our budget on high performance, which means a lot more is spent on participation, so we need to keep the balance right."

The establishment of an Institute of Sport, which Minister for Sport John O'Donoghue confirmed would now be a priority, was particularly pleasing for Treacy.

"It's really about tapping into the brainpower that we have around the country, because we have some real experts in Ireland, in universities and places like that."

Treacy, however, played down the criticism of the NCTC, whose days as the national centre of sporting excellence are now numbered. "In fairness, I think they have tried to be all things to everyone. And we'd be looking at a lot more quality than quantity. The conclusion is they're trying to do too much."

The review was commissioned a month before the Athens Games, and carried out by a 10-member steering group chaired by Dan Flinter, under the direction of Neil Tunnicliffe of British-based Wharton Consulting.

The cost of the review came in at around €40,000 (compared with £20,000 spent on the Sydney review), but the most surprising detail in the methodology is the athletes questionnaire could only attract a response rate of 43.75 per cent from the 49 Athens competitors, and 37.5 per cent from the Paralympic athletes. Clearly those percentages are disappointingly poor, well down on the 58.82 per cent rate of the Sydney review.

The low response rate is partly explained by the fact that athletes had less to complain about than after Sydney, but, none the less, it does somewhat undermine the review's conclusions and recommendations in that many of these were based on the athletes' responses.

The single most startling difference between the Athens and Sydney reviews is the assessment of the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI).

"We're very happy with it," admitted OCI president Pat Hickey. "Unlike the last time, when it was like Star Wars, we were very much a partner in the review, and that's the way to go forward."

The funding issue was something he felt strongly about. "Since 1996 we've been out of that loop. But we've been invited to sit on the review body of the carding scheme, and I think our experience of living and working with the athletes would be a help because you can't beat that experience in a grant committee.

"In fact I think the crucial element in all of this is the review of the carding system. It's been going on without checks and controls for too long. You can't give an athlete €20,000 and let them off with it. There has to be a control factor, and if the athlete is not performing there has to be a pull back. That has proven to work in other European countries."

Hickey confirmed that the OCI chief executive position would be advertised in the next two months, with a final target date of September 1st. They are expecting considerable interest from abroad in the post.

But he feels the short-term ambitions remain unrealistically high. "We should aim for between six and nine finalists, but personally, I think it's too high. But I am happy to see the recommendation to invest in minority sports.

"And we'll continue to see smaller teams going to the Games. Some standards will be reduced as, say, the IAAF starts to look at the role of doping in certain events. But I believe the WADA code is making great inroads. And by 2008 we will be well on the way to solving the drug problem in the Olympic movement." More or less good news all round then.