New Lotto funding policy will hurt athletes

THE National Lotteries Commission (NLC) yesterday moved to calm fears over sports funding‚ but instead created more consternation as it revealed a new policy that will hurt athletes.

New regulations will not allow funding for activities outside the borders of South Africa‚ the NLC said‚ which means no more funding for athletes‚ swimmers‚ rowers‚ triathletes‚ canoeists and others competing and training abroad.

The NLC was reacting to a report quoting SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) officials saying South African sport was in peril because of two new regulations.

One was the 12-month cooling off period between grants.

The other was downgrading Sascoc‚ an umbrella body‚ to the status of a national federation‚ which would have meant a massive cut in funding to R5-million from sometimes in excess of R100-million.

The NLC denied Sascoc had been downgraded‚ but chief executive Tubby Reddy insisted this was what he had been told by Lotto officials in a meeting.

It also explained that the cooling off period would not delay new grants because these would be processed within 150 days.

But the new regulation about not funding international endeavours took administrators by surprise‚ with Reddy and Swimming SA president Alan Fritz saying this was the first they had heard of it.

Reddy confirmed that a significant chunk of Sascoc’s Operation Excellence funding went to athletes competing and training abroad.

Fritz said many swimmers already had to self-fund a portion of their trips to competitions abroad.

“We don’t have a sponsor and we are in dire straits‚” he said.

Reddy said Sascoc was scheduled to meet NLC officials next week.

The NLC said it received 14 000 applications exceeding R70-billion annually‚ but its budget was just R1.6-billion.