Athletics funding could be withheld after crisis talks
UK Sport will demand answers over Hyde Peters Olympic handout for 2024 will be reviewed
UK Sport will this week hold crisis talks with UK Athletics and wants reassurances about the organisation’s future governance before signing off on funding for the next Olympic cycle.
Sally Munday, new chief executive of UK Sport, intends to meet with Chris Clark, the chair of UK Athletics, and has not ruled out launching an independent review of the organisation, just as one was commissioned previously to investigate British Cycling.
Munday, though, wants first to fully understand how UK Athletics came to appoint Zara Hyde Peters as chief executive before she was then forced to stand down ahead of this week’s start date. It followed claims that she failed to tell her local athletics club, at which she was a coaching coordinator and then vice-chair, about her husband’s alleged “inappropriate relationship” with a 15-year-old girl and that he continued coaching at the club.
UK Athletics, which received almost £27million in public funding from UK Sport for the current Olympic cycle, has now lost its chief executive, performance director and chair in the space of 10 months. It also failed to reach its medal target at the recent World Championships in Doha.
Sports need to submit their applications for funding in the buildup to Paris 2024 in the new year. UK Sport will want to know that UK Athletics has its house in order before signing off on giving it any money. That could mean UK Athletics being told not to bother submitting its application until it is able to demonstrate this.
Munday stressed that decisions would be taken for UK Athletics’s long-term health. “It would be very easy in this situation to make a knee-jerk reaction – things unfolded pretty quickly over the weekend – and I think it’s appropriate to take a deep breath, sit down with them face to face and have a conversation about what’s the right thing to do now to get things right for the long term,” she said.
“They are clearly having some difficulties. Having conversations is important to make sure they are equipped to support their staff and athletes going on to Tokyo and, secondly, to make sure they are able to do what’s required to get in the best place for the long term.”
Of the wider funding question, Munday said: “We do an annual review with all the sports, looking at their milestone targets. Clearly, the outcome of those reviews influences our discussions about how we invest.”
Hyde Peters’s enforced resignation followed performance director Neil Black’s departure after the fallout from the Alberto Salazar doping scandal. It continues a stream of high-profile exits that included Niels de Vos departing as chief executive last autumn and Richard Bowker being forced to step down as chairman when facing a vote of no confidence in January.
Clark, who succeeded Bowker, maintained his support for Hyde Peters to do an “excellent job” after the scandal first broke last week. That initial rash statement has led some to call for Clark to step down as well, but The Daily Telegraph understands that the UK Athletics members council will support Clark at its annual meeting next month in the hope he commits to wholesale changes of his UK Athletics board.
“It’s just gone from crisis to crisis,” one council member said. “It’s quite embarrassing, to be honest. It’s shambolic.
“I don’t think going after Chris is going to make things any better – and it would probably make life worse. What it needs is a complete overhaul. An entirely new board, along with a chief executive, to get some fresh thinking in.”
Another member said they would raise the suggestion of merging the UK Athletics board with the members’ council.
“Chris doesn’t have a background in athletics and has probably been quite horrified by what he’s found – we need to work with him,” the member said.
Toni Minichiello, Jessica Ennishill’s former coach and a senior figure on the members council, hopes Clark’s lack of athletics experience will prove useful.
“He’s independent,” he said. “He’s coming in with an objective business eye. Some of the cultures within different departments in the company need examination. It’s about basic governance now and how you run a company. It’s about leadership, which has been lacking.”
Although Munday acknowledged that athletes would “probably be distressed” by the UK Athletics crisis, she was confident they would not be distracted or impaired in their preparations for Tokyo.
Hyde Peters posted a Facebook message yesterday in which she said that she was heartbroken to have given up “on a lifetime dream”.