Great Britain’s top skiers and snowboarders are facing a funding crisis in the run up to February’s Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Snowsport GB, the national governing body, have dug themselves a financial black hole following excessive spending with debts of £300,000 reported by acting chief executive Robin Kellen back in August.
Those debts prompted the sacking of then chief executive Mark Simmers, but Kellen and non executive chairman Oliver Jones, were eventually able to arrange a four-year, £350,000 loan with a variety of backers and with the support of lead sponsor British Land.
But Snowsport GB were forced to suspend funding between May and July, which coupled with the global economic crisis, ensured British athletes faced the financial hardship of having to shell out for summer training themselves.
Funding has since been reinstated but the current Snowsport GB budget is just £1.3million a year, £800,000 of which comes from the corridors of power in Westminster.
And that figure pales in comparison to the budgets of cycling and rowing which, for the lead-up to London 2012, have a combined total of more than £54m.
Some of Britain’s Olympic hopefuls have even resorted to throwing their own fundraisers in a bid to minimise the number of crucial training weeks on snow.
“The funding issues have been so difficult but you do what you have to do because I want to be a competitive skier and that’s what it involves at the moment,” said double British champion Ed Drake.
“British winter sports athletes are suffering because of London getting the 2012 Games as some of the funding has been taken from us and put into that instead.”
Fellow double British champion Dougie Crawford added: “It’s been a crappy summer because of the funding and it’s caused a lot of stress, which you could do without.
“We’ve missed out on a lot of skiing days and we are now all forced into doing our own thing.”
Crawford has a fundraiser in Glasgow this weekend to raise much needed cash but the recession has meant summer Olympic sports were hit with funding cuts too.
Water polo and fencing were among eight sports that saw their budget slashed for the lead-up the London Olympics by more than 50 per cent, compared to their Beijing 2008 budgets.
And skiing and snowboarding are two sports that do not come cheap, with British athletes having to go abroad to find suitable training conditions.
And a shoestring budget, coupled with the relative weakness of the pound in the current economic climate, is not making life easy according the snowboarder Zoe GIllings.
“It’s ridiculous when you consider that just to compete in winter sports you need to travel out of the country to train so already the costs are high and we get less money than other sports,” said Gillings, ranked fifth in the world at snowboardcross and one of Britain’s main medal hopes for Vancouver 2010.
“So much money is going towards athletes for 2012 and it’s a real shame we miss out so much.
“You need a combination of government funding and sponsors because there is no way you could do it just relying on government money.”
Olympic hopeful skier Pam Thorburn added: “I had to fund my own trip to New Zealand along with some of the guys on the team and as a result we had no coaches and just had to train ourselves. That was really hard especially in such an important year.”
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