UK Sport confirm funding for Powerlifting & Weightlifting

World Class Programmes through to London 2012

UK Sport today announced the outcome of their review of the funding for Olympic and Paralympic sports.  Powerlifting’s  funding of c£1.1 million for the four year cycle 2009-13 has now been confirmed, previously the funding for the last two years was only provisional.  Weightlifting’s funding award has effectively been doubled from £680,023 to £1,360,157. 

Commenting WCL chair Jonathan Fuller said, “This is excellent news for all involved with World Class Lifting.  It removes the uncertainty over the funding of our programmes for the last two years of this Olympic / Paralympic cycle that has existed since UK Sport announced the original funding levels back in January of this year.   At that time the weightlifting’s funding award of £680k for the 4 year period, 2009-2013, was a significant reduction from the £1.4 million that weightlifting had received over the previous 3 years.  In order to be able to run an appropriate world class programme the WCL Board took the decision to receive that £680k upfront over the first two years.  The aim was to clearly demonstrate that a successful programme could be operated given sufficient funding.  Thanks to the effort of our athletes, coaches and staff, that decision has now been vindicated and we are now in a position to action our Strategic Plan through to London 2012.” 

“In reaching their funding decision, UK Sport has recognised the progress that we have achieved over the last 12 months including the development of the High Performance Centre in Leeds, WCL becoming a subsidiary of the sports’ governing body BWLA and the excellent progress of our athletes.  Both sports have hit the key performance targets for 2009 that had been previously agreed with UK Sport.  Under Nicola Vaughan-Ellis our elite powerlifters, Natalie Blake, Jason Irving, Anthony Peddle and Adam Alderman, all achieved notable results at the recent Silver Bar competition in Poland.  We used this competition as a replacement for the cancelled European Championships and believe the results obtained would have seen all our lifters medal had the Europeans gone ahead.  Our weightlifters, under Tamás Fehér, also achieved their 2009 targets.  Natasha Perdue, one of our athletes now based full-time at the HPC, achieved a top 20 ranking at last month’s World Championships following on from Zoe Smith’s top 5 position at the European Youth Championships.”

“All our staff, full-time and part-time, who have been ably led by Performance Manager Fiona Lothian, have played their part over the last year.  They accepted the financial constraints within which they were asked to operate and have made much progress – a point recognised well by UK Sport.  We have a sound structure in place and, with today’s confirmation of future funding, can now start pushing ahead towards achieving our goals for both sports at London 2012.”

To find out more about UK Sports investment in World Class Programmes for 2012 click here.

To find out more about the additional support being provided to sports  through the Team 2012 iniative click here.