Sport doesn’t owe anybody a living
NETBALL gets £16.9million of Government funding despite the fact there are no Olympic medals on offer. Why? People play it. Women, mostly, which is why £10.5m of the grant is earmarked to encourage adults out on to the court again. Badminton has good participation levels, too, although one could be forgiven for thinking its funding had now been cut to zero. It hasn’t. UK Sport entirely withdrew its £5.7m investment in elite badminton in the latest round of grant adjustments but badminton at grass roots level has still garnered £18m from Sport England alone, between 2013 and 2017. It is the same for wheelchair rugby, archery, fencing, all the disciplines that have suffered due to UK Sport’s relentless drive for medals. Nobody is abandoning the participants at entry level. It is those with ambitions of professionalism that suffer. ‘I really hope it doesn’t get to the stage where I have to look for another job,’ said Chris Langridge, a bronze medallist in badminton men’s doubles at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. But there’s the rub. A job is what someone will pay you to do. If UK Sport won’t pay Langridge the necessary, and no sponsor, benefactor or capacity crowd will either, then badminton isn’t really a job. It’s a hobby. And while that may sound brutal, it is the way of the world in difficult times. Nobody is saying Langridge cannot play badminton. They are saying he might not be able to play badminton as a full-time occupation. Same with archery, unless Robin Hood is getting the band back together, or we’re thinking of taking another Agincourt-style pop at the French. The world will always need plumbers.