GB Shooting boss axed after cash cut

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British Shooting has decided to make performance director John Leighton-Dyson redundant as part of a major shake-up after a heavy funding cut.

The figure of 46 funded competitors from the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics is set to be reduced to five.

Shooting suffered the heaviest funding cut of all Olympic sports, with a 76% reduction to £1.225m over four years.

Link to BBC website article

A bad day for GB shooting, I'm sorry to see such a leading figure depart the scene.

Sparks

To be fair, BS didn't axe JLD, he did the math after the british government cut the funding by 78% and resigned. He gave the presentation on the figures himself.
And losing him does do quite a bad number on team GB, right at the time they should be getting more support than normal.

Sparks

And reduced to five??? Feck, I'd heard ten as the preliminary figure, five is a bit of a kick in the teeth - hell, they just had Sheree Cox win three golds in a row in Intershoot, setting a new British Record with the last one, and Huckle cleaned up all round him in the men's air rifle as well.

Well, sod the british government, I say we pick up as many of those 41 they're dropping as we can through the grandfather rule and get them to bring home some gold for us instead!

phantom_lord

that's disappointing, surely a big waste of talent.

rrpc

Sparks wrote: »

Well, sod the british government, I say we pick up as many of those 41 they're dropping as we can through the grandfather rule and get them to bring home some gold for us instead!

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JLD's redundancy was well flagged as a likely outcome following the results of the squad in Beijing. While they had a very strong support team including Kimmo Yli Jaskari from Finland as their rifle coach, it would appear that they were a little short in the depth of talent available for Beijing.

I believe the real focus on that talent was for Lonon 2012 and that Beijing would not see the performance that the funding bodies expected. It's just a pity as that talent will find it much harder now to emerge.

It's a common problem that we face on both sides of the water where the investment in minority sports, and it seems in particular shooting, is based soely on their ability to win world and international level medals.

There is no percieved appetitie within government or its agencies to invest in building the junior squads and support teams to maintain a pipeline of homegrown emerging talent.

rrpc

It doesn't always have to be government funding though. Look at the amount of private investment in sport that's been happening here such as Denis O'Brien investing in Trappatoni for the FAI and I believe he's pledged to invest in Samoan Rugby to keep the players from going to New Zealand.

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rrpc wrote: »

It doesn't always have to be government funding though.

Agreed, but that was the very reason that the London 2012 organisers gave for the shortfall in funding made available for the last 11 sports including shooting.

They had planned that a public private partnership model would make up the balance of funds that they had earlier earmarked and they have now acknowledged that not a single penny of private funding was raised.

Looking to the private sector is not a runner in this economic climate. If the major sports are having difficulty with securing reliable sources of sponsorship then our chances are minimal. Unfortunately our best hope is still governmental in nature.

Sparks

Which is a shame, but feck it, if TDs are fast enough to get in for the photo-ops, and they're paying for the medals with the money of the people our teams are representing, well, there's at least some symmetry there.

sfakiaman

target wrote: »

It's a common problem that we face on both sides of the water where the investment in minority sports, and it seems in particular shooting, is based soely on their ability to win world and international level medals.

I think its time to get past the thinking that shooting is a minority sport. Shooting is probably one of the major participent sports in the country along with golf and angling.

Watching soccer on the tele down the pub is not sport (though camogie might be depending on ones point of view). Certainly more people shoot than box or run marathons.

Most shooters may not shoot competitivly but for any sport to prosper there needs to be support for those with the ability to rise to the top.

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More footage on the troubles of GB Shooting and the lack of preparations for London 2012.

Link to BBC Video