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News

Reassurances for Olympic Hopefuls

The Borough of Poole is working to allay fears that lost funding for the High Performance Centre at the Rossmore Leisure Centre-based Gymnastics and Trampolining Centre of Excellence may have a detrimental effect on some of the town's most talented young sports people. 

Sports governing body British Gymnastics approached Rossmore in 2002 with a view to becoming a High Performance Centre under the Sport England World-Class Programme. The contract for the High Performance Centre commenced on April 1 2003 and the leisure centre, home of the OLGA club, received £19,800 per annum as well as the loan of four additional trampolines to provide a base for trampolinists selected for World-Class training from the South and South West. Trampolinists from the OLGA club itself made up the bulk of the athletes on the programme.

Recently UK Sport and Sport England reviewed funding arrangements for the 2005-09 Olympic cycle and British Gymnastics submitted its One Stop Plan containing World Class Start, Potential and Performance elements to UK Sport.  New funding arrangements were announced in February.

The grants for World Class Performance were in line with British Gymnastics expectations, but the funding for Potential and Start was dramatically lower than anticipated. Consequently British Gymnastics has been faced with no option but to scale down World-Class operations and under current arrangements High Performance Centres including Rossmore are not sustainable.

The contract for the HPC at Rossmore was consequently not renewed when it expired on March 31 2005. While the Centre lost the £19,800 of income from the 2005/2006 budget, it continued to support the World-Class programme until June 30 2005 when contracts for the British Gymnastics coaching staff expired. The Centre has retained two of the loan World-Class trampolines and also employed one of the High Performance Coaches on a part-time basis for its own elite performers.

The funding blow comes as 12 young people from Rossmore have just qualified to represent Great Britain at the World Age Group Championships to be held in September including current World Champion Katy I'anson. The funding from the High Performance Centre is important to enable the centre to continue to provide the necessary resources and retain its highly qualified team of coaches as a regional centre of excellence.

Cllr Don Collier, Cabinet Portfolio Holder for the Environment, Borough of Poole, said: "This is really disappointing and I am struggling to understand why the funding has been reduced in the year we are awarded the Olympics. The Centre management have worked hard to maintain this valuable service to develop our talented youngsters and I can assure people the Council will continue to do so despite this set back. I am looking at how we can maintain or replace this funding and provide the coaching support that is needed.  Supporting young people is one of the Council's priorities; they are the future of the town.

"Given the right support it is not unlikely that the twelve selected for the World Championships, along with many of the other youngsters that train at Rossmore, will be pushing for selection at the 2012 Olympics."

Tim Hill, Team Leader for Leisure Centres, Borough of Poole, said: "We are determined to support all the young people at the centre both recreational and those who have aspirations to compete at the highest level. The announcement of the success of the London bid for the 2012 Olympics could not have come at a better time. In the next few years there will surely be additional funding ploughed into sport in this country and Governing Bodies will recover and gain extra funding to support excellence in sport. Until that time we will ensure there is no decline in our standards of service."

Clive Smith, Head of Leisure Services, Borough of Poole tel 01202 261380