JONATHAN COATES
AFTER unveiling a £5 million increase in funding for sports coaches across the country, Sportscotland chair Julia Bracewell admitted the success or failure of Glasgow’s 2014 Commonwealth Games bid could decide the scale of any future announcements.
The government quango will spend £2.5million on creating about 40 new coaching positions, full-time and part-time, with sports such as gymnastics, boxing, archery and curling already reaping the benefits.
Should Glasgow defeat Abuja in the 2014 race next week, Bracewell agreed it was likely the public budget at her disposal would increase, and said the 17 sports included in the Games programme would benefit from special attention.
She said: "I think it would be huge if Glasgow won. It would give a real focus to all the work that has gone on. The more medals we can win and the more we can lift our sports to a level where, if the are going to be beaten, they are only going to be narrowly beaten, we will have a country buzzing around sport.
"We are all waiting to hear what the [Scottish Executive’s] Comprehensive Spending Review will be, and I think all we can say is that we will certainly be asking for more money if we are going to deliver more medals.
“If we didn’t win, it would be business as usual. We would all be really disappointed, obviously, but we would still have a 2012 Olympics Games we would like Scots to perform at, as well as a Ryder Cup and a Winter Olympics that year.”
The other half of the £5million will be ploughed into the UK Coaching Certificate scheme. Sportscotland aims to provide a 75 per cent subsidy of the fees for volunteer coaches across 21 sports who want to achieve a Level 1 qualification.
This article: http://sport.scotsman.com/athletics.cfm?id=1747182007
Last updated: 02-Nov-07 00:44 GMT