A year that began with a history-making golden
moment in the mountains of British Columbia has been crucial in
setting the stage for continued success for British athletes in
2011, 2012 and beyond.
Skeleton athlete Amy Williams thrilled Great
Britain with her gold medal performance at the Vancouver 2010
Olympic Winter Games, becoming the first British athlete in 30 years
to win Olympic gold in an individual event.
That performance was just the first of many that
saw British athletes, winter and summer, achieve personal-bests and
podium finishes in major international events such as the Olympic
Winter Games, the Commonwealth Games and the inaugural Youth Olympic
Games.
For the British Olympic Association (BOA) and its
member National Governing Bodies for Olympic sport, 2010 has been a
year of growth and strong progress, both nationally and
internationally. British governing bodies are some of the most
respected in the world and our influence on the international
sporting landscape is ever increasing thanks to the commitment and
expertise within our sports.
At the BOA we recognise the need to play our part
for British sport internationally and have embraced involvement in
the wide programme of work across the Olympic Movement. In
particular, we play a significant role in two European Olympic
Committee Commissions and Sir Clive Woodward has been active on the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) Entourage Commission. I will
chair the newly formed Association of National Olympic Committees
Commission, which covers relations between the 205 National Olympic
Committees and Governments around the world. The autonomy of the
Olympic Movement is critical and with it the protection of the
Olympic rights which has always been its lifeblood. In this context
sports bodies need to be representative and 2010 will be remembered
as the year in which the BOA regained its own Athletes’ Commission –
this time strengthened substantially. It is excellently chaired by
Sarah Winckless and in line with the recommendations of the 2009
Olympic Congress in Copenhagen, there is nothing we do at the BOA
today which is not a matter of direct concern and has input from
athletes. Yet the crowning achievement of the year was the election
of Adam Pengilly as the first British winter-sport athlete to be
elected to the IOC Athletes’ Commission.
Jeremy Hunt, as the new Secretary of State,
focused his attention in sport during 2010 on the England World Cup
bid and the Government’s central objective to introduce competitive
school sport into every primary and secondary school in England. The
aim of the latter is that all schoolchildren, able-bodied and
disabled, should compete within their schools with annual sports
days to be proud of and the delivery of school leagues in a range of
sports from this summer. If successful, this will transform school
sport in England. Despite 13 years of lottery money we are still at
the embarrassing and unacceptable position in which more than 50% of
our Olympic medallists come from just the 7% of our schoolchildren
who attend private schools. This welcome Central Government
initiative must be about both participation and righting the wrong
where tens of thousands of schoolchildren have neither their
sporting talent identified in the state sector, nor are they
provided with a performance pathway to take their talent through to
local, regional and national representation.
There will be many lessons to learn from this new
initiative. Regrettably, the new event will not have an Olympic
association, as Government has designed it in a manner that fails to
meet the IOC requirements to protect an Olympic association and the
BOA will follow the advice of the IOC in protecting the Olympic
Movement against ambush marketing. The President of the IOC has
emphasised that the use of the ‘Olympic brand’ must not compromise
neither the BOA’s autonomy nor its ability to market the commercial
rights for Team GB in the future, and we will work with the IOC to
ensure their requests are met.
To demonstrate our enthusiasm for this initiative,
the BOA will evaluate establishing its own Commission on Youth and
Sport for All which could review progress on Britain’s Competitive
School Sport Policy, its organisation, governance and value for
money and against this background consider whether to launch a
British Olympic Association School Games in 2013 and beyond. We will
continue to work both within and outside Parliament on this, which
goes to the heart of our Olympic Charter mandate.
Our immediate priority this year will be the
selection, management and leadership of the teams we will be taking
to the European Youth Olympic Winter Festival in the Czech Winter
Resort of Liberec and the European Youth Olympic Festival in
Trabzon, Turkey for the summer sports. We have strong prospects in
both events and are particularly keen to work with the winter
National Governing Bodies of Olympic sport to establish the British
Olympic Winter Institute of Sport, aimed at providing our winter
sports and athletes with a support network and commercial financial
stability to allow us as a nation to fulfill our potential on the
winter Olympic stage.
2011 will also be the most important of the seven
year build-up to the 2012 Olympic Games for British Olympic
Athletes, for the funding security of tomorrow’s British Olympic
Movement, for our organisation at the BOA and for the design and
delivery of a much needed Olympic Sports Legacy for the future of
Olympic sport in the United Kingdom.
Looking back at 2010, the Coalition Government
faced difficult decisions regarding sport and recreation. During the
challenging months of negotiation leading up to the Comprehensive
Spending Round, the work undertaken by Hugh Robertson, as Minister
for Sport and the Olympics, provided strong support for Team GB
hopefuls and ensured the continuity of funding so critical for the
preparation of Team GB. His expertise, enthusiasm and passion for
sport is a major asset for all of us in the Olympic Movement. Now,
with funding in place, the role of Government and UK Sport will
diminish as the focus over the next seventeen months will be on the
athletes, the Governing Bodies and the coaches and experts who
support our athletes in all Olympic disciplines. We will continue to
select the British Olympic Team for 2012 on merit; expecting at the
very least credible performances from everyone we select, personal
bests and where expected, medal success from our leading athletes.
The BOA will further step-up its role of building close working
relations with the athletes and Governing Bodies to ensure a
seamless transition to success as Team GB enters the Olympic
Village.
The work in 2011 has to be transformational if we
are to deliver a true sports legacy and ensure the London 2012
Olympic Games become a Great Olympic Games. We need to make certain
the welcome measures announced by Hugh Robertson are substantially
built upon. We must continue to protect playing fields. In England
we must encourage politicians to match Scottish and Welsh
legislation to require local authorities to provide for sport and
recreational investment as mandatory and not discretionary spend. We
need to encourage government to deliver a step change in health
department support for active lifestyles in tackling the growing
problem of child obesity and we need to see through the
restructuring of British sport to empower Governing Bodies, Clubs,
schools and volunteers and move away from the centralised,
micro-managed government bureaucracy which has too often cramped
initiative.
In closing I want to thank the management and
staff at the BOA for their remarkable, highly professional
contribution to the Olympic movement. It is not only some of our
finest athletes who have been punching above their weight. The BOA
has been transformed in recent years. For the first time we have
instituted best practice governance. We have implemented a step
change in the strength of our commercial and financial expertise.
That process of transformation started the day Seb Coe, Tessa Jowell
and Tony Blair came together to lead a team which delivered the
handful of votes which swung the Games to London. Today we recognise
that our role is more than taking teams of the Best of British
athletes to an increasing number of Olympic-accredited Games. Now,
we work on every facet of our wide-ranging responsibilities embedded
in the IOC’s Olympic Charter and in 2011 we intend to build on this
full agenda of work.
Colin Moynihan
British Olympic Association
