A Gymnastics Blog
Posts tagged British Gymnastics
Gymnastics & Funding
Jul 28th
Over the last few years, the interest in gymnastics seems to have increased. There are many possible reasons for this, obviously Spelbound winning Britains Got Talent has caused a surge in interest in gymnastics among children in the UK and Ireland. I think another major factor that has added to this interest is the new level of competition involved in the sport at Olympic level. For many years it was the Romanians, USA and Russia etc dominating the sport but as we have seen in the last few months, countries like the UK are catching up quickly and making things a lot more interesting, thus the media becoming more interested in gymnastics!
With that in mind, it makes me think about funding in gymnastics. I was reading this article from the BBC Sport website yesterday which includes a small section about the amount of funding given to gymnastics and what it means to the sport. Sport England has allocated £11,388,481 to gymnastic national governing bodies for 2009 until 2013, with the hope that the numbers increase and gymnasts perform better although gymnasts such as Daniel Keatings and Louis Smith are still waiting for their gyms to be refurbished, with the Olympics coming closer and closer, they’d want to secure funding very soon to move passed the initial phase.
Admittedly, I haven’t looked too much into it but how much funding does gymnastics receive from governments / sports bodies in your country? We can see above what BBC Sport have reported, I’m sure there is more to find out. In a previous post, Irish Gymnastics secured an allocation for 2010 of €169,545 for the sport – encouraging as gymnastics was one of only 11 sports out of 59 funded that maintained their funding levels this year in a year where the Irish Sports Council’s budget was cut by 4%. In Ireland, gymnastics is considering more of a minority sport as the country has it’s main sports rugby, football and the GAA sports (Gaelic and Hurling). It would be interesting to see how much more successful Irish gymnasts could be if more money was pumped in, providing better training facilities and national support etc. I’d love to know how much funding USA Gymnastics, Australian Gymnastics etc receives and how the money is spent.
So it leaves me asking:
How much funding does gymnastics receive in your country?
What difference do you think more funding could make to gymnastics in your country?
Do you feel that the allocated money is being wasted and could be used more resourcefully?
If it was you who makes the decisions, what would you spend more money on? better coaches? better facilities?
I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts.
London 2012 – 2 years to go
Jul 26th
Tomorrow will mark the day when it will be exactly 2 years until the London 2012 Olympic Games begin. Tim Jones Performance Director speaks to the Guardian about how British Gymnastics has developed over the past year and what it must do next to meet the Olympic medal target.
In the next two years we will … continue building on the successes of the first years of this cycle and ensuring our results are progressive towards London, work towards keeping our gymnasts injury-free and illness-free, qualifying for as many places as possible through the series of World Championships in the Olympic disciplines during 2011, and focusing our resources towards a successful Olympic outcome.
Gymnastics : try it for free
Jun 29th
This is a good initiative; Swindon School of Gymnastics in the UK are offering a free two-hour taster session for non-members on Sunday, July 4th. There’s no new information about it on their club website but it is in the Swindon Advertiser
The event, from 2-4pm is an ideal opportunity for school-aged children to visit the fully-equipped gymnasium and to see if the sport is for them before committing to the termly fees.
To book a place, call 01793 480846 or email ssginfo @ tiscali.co.uk with your child’s name, date of birth and a contact number.
WAG British Championships
Jun 1st
Tickets are now on sale for the WAG British Championships which will take place at the Guildford Spectrum on July 3rd and 4th. The competition will see the return to action of many of the 2010 Senior European Team Silver medallists including European Floor and A. Bars Champion Beth Tweddle and reigning British Senior Champion Becky Downie.
Ticket prices: Adult’s £15 per session and Under 12’s £10 per session.
Click here to book your tickets to the event.
Researchers to investigate sale of eating disorders among gymnasts
Jun 1st
According to Wales Online, Welsh researchers are to investigate sale of eating disorders among gymnasts. A team of researchers from Swansea University have been given a grant of £100,000 ($145,000 / €120,000) to find out if young star gymnasts are starving themselves for success.
They will begin their research which will span over 18 months, in partnership with British Gymnastics this summer. The Team will investigate how British elite gymnasts develop freedom of choice, self image and identity within the elite gymnastics environment they find themselves. The research project is a multi-disciplinary effort drawing from philosophical, psychiatric, and social-sciences research perspectives to understand the ethos of elite gymnastics. It’s the perfect time to do this research, given that gymnasts are currently training in the lead up to the London 2012 Olympics and the World Championships in Rotterdam.
Steve Green , the Technical Manager of British Gymnastics says:
We hope to learn from this piece of research to better refine our identification system and pathway of intervention to the benefit of not only gymnastics, but to share the model with other sports.
It’s excellent to read in the article the BG already have a a frame work in place for supporting gymnasts with eating disorders. It’s great that British Gymnastics are supporting this research and it’ll be interesting to see the project results.
Why are Britain’s gymnasts suddenly so good?
May 6th
Ollie Williams wonders..
Why, though, is this all happening now? Who has flicked a switch to turn Britain from a gymnastics also-ran to a world power with an eye on medals at a home Olympics? Is it all down to money?
It’s certainly an interesting take on it. Have a read of the article. I always love reading about how gymnastics is funded in other countries and how their systems work.
