Skeleton funding could be on the slide
Only eighth place set as Winter Games target Sports need 2022 medal favourites to keep cash
Lizzy Yarnold and Great Britain’s other skeleton athletes were last night in danger of being stripped of all their public funding, after the sport failed to commit to delivering more than an eighth-place finish at the Winter Olympics.
Despite having been given £6.5million in the four years leading up to Pyeongchang 2018, and boasting the defending women’s champion in Yarnold, the minimum target agreed between UK Sport and its most successful winter sport did not include winning a medal.
Exchequer and National Lottery cash for figure skating and bobsleigh was also under threat after they, too, committed only to topeight and top-five finishes respectively, ahead of yesterday’s announcement of Team GB’S podium prospects.
Britain’s winter sport teams may need to prove they can all but guarantee a top-three finish at the 2022 Games in Beijing to keep their cash. Eighth place in Pyeongchang would undermine any attempt to do so, with elite funding body UK Sport, which issues grants based on future medal prospects that take into account previous results.
Skeleton’s UK Sport funding almost doubled in the build-up to Pyeongchang, after Yarnold won gold in Sochi to succeed compatriot Amy Williams as Olympic champion. It was also the fourth Games in succession in which Britain’s sliders had delivered a medal, following silver for Shelley Rudman in 2006 and bronze for Alex Coomber four years earlier.
After adding world and European titles to her Olympic crown to complete a golden grand slam, Yarnold looked poised to dominate her sport for years. But she stunned fans by taking a year off, citing burnout, and although she returned to claim world bronze last year, her results have nosedived this season and she last night lay 12th in the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation Rankings.
The 29-year-old is not even British No1, having been outperformed in 2017-18 by team-mate Laura Deas.
“We’d be investing in strong medal potential in Beijing,” UK Sport chief executive Liz Nicholl confirmed yesterday, after being asked whether the public would be justified in deeming an eighthplace finish in skeleton not good enough for a £6.5 million investment. “We’re not looking for an eighth finish here; we’re hoping it’s going to be a medal, and it could well be a medal.”
As revealed by The Daily Telegraph, Team GB were challenged to win up to 10 medals in total in Pyeongchang, having been tasked with beating the record-equalling tally of four they won at the last Games in Sochi – which should rise to five when one is reallocated following the Russian doping scandal.
The target range announced yesterday was four to 10, with an expectation that at least five would be delivered across six sports, which also included curling (one to two medals), ski and snowboard (two to three) and short-track speedskating (one to two).
Paralympics GB was also challenged to produce at least one more medal at Pyeongchang than four years ago, a minimum of seven from a range of six to 12. The six they won in Sochi was their best for 30 years and second most at a Games.
Britain’s Paralympic medal prospects would be boosted by the maintenance of the blanket ban on Russia from March’s Games following the country’s doping scandal.
Dame Katherine Grainger, UK Sport chairman, said a tougher punishment should have been imposed on their Olympic team than the qualified suspension handed down last month.
Grainger, herself a victim of Russian doping, having been reallocated a gold medal from the 2006 World Rowing Championships, said: “It’s hard to put into words just how painful it is when that happens in your event and in your sport. For us, it happened at a home world championships as well; in our own back garden. What it steals from athletes is irreplaceable.”
Yesterday, North Korea agreed to take part in the Winter Games in South Korea following talks to end military tensions between the countries. Team GB chef de mission Mike Hay admitted the breakthrough would give British athletes and their entourages confidence that travelling to the region “might not be as big a worry as it might have been”.