Helen Grant MP

Do you remember where you were on the evening of Saturday, November 19, 1994? There’s a fair chance that, like my family, you were sitting around the TV watching six balls fall out of a machine as 22 million of us hoped for a win from the first ever national lottery draw.

That evening started a fund from which millions of us benefit through grants to our national heritage, charities, sports and special causes.

A couple of years later at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta Britain’s Olympians reached a low point in our sporting history, winning just one gold from a total of 15 medals. It was time to find some money and later that year the National Lottery designated part of its revenue towards our Olympic effort.

Eight years on I was one of the lucky spectators at the 2004 Athens Olympics where we won 28 medals and a new dawn had begun.

Our sporting governing bodies have since enjoyed an unbroken funding stream from the National Lottery allowing them to develop and follow a long term strategy for medal success focusing upon the right sports, finding the best talent and bringing in the finest expertise the world has to offer.

In 2008 our Olympians won 47 medals; in London 2012 the figure rose to 65; and after 16 days of action, jubilation, heartbreak and