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Rod Carr

The newly appointed chair of UK Sport talks to Sports Management about coaching, inspiring children and the ambitious target set for Team GB – to go to Rio in 2016 and improve on the amazing performance at London 2012

by Tom Walker, Leisure Media | Published in Sports Management 2013 issue 2
Rod Carr
Rod Carr

It’s a year since Team GB enjoyed its most successful Olympic Games ever. Competing in 26 sports at London 2012, British athletes won 65 medals (29 golds), securing third place in the overall medal table. The team’s performances on the track, the pool and around the arenas played a crucial role in delivering a great Games and giving the entire nation a much-needed boost.

The effects of this “Olympic experience” can still be felt in both the national mood and the UK economy; while sports clubs and leisure centres up and down the country have registered increases in participation and members, restaurants, hotels and pubs too have benefitted from Britons rekindling their love affair with all things British.

Despite the phenomenal success of the Games, however, there has been no Olympic hangover at UK Sport – the elite performance body responsible for funding the Team GB athletes. The record-breaking medal haul from London 2012 is not an end result, but rather an interim goal and the organisation’s plan is for Team GB athletes to go even faster, higher and stronger at Rio 2016.

Change of guard
The end of London 2012 saw a changing of the guard at the top of UK Sport. The organisation’s chair, Sue Campbell, stepped down after serving the maximum term of eight years and was replaced by Rod Carr. While Campbell came into the job in 2003 after a career in academia, Carr has a mightily impressive track record on the frontline of high performance sport.

A veteran of eight Olympic Games, Carr is widely credited with developing the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) from an under-achieving organisation into one which has delivered one of Great Britain’s most successful Olympic programmes. At the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, he was deputy chef de mission for the entire Team GB.

Carr took up his role at UK Sport in June 2013 and wasted little time in setting out his stall. He describes the task ahead as clear but difficult. “On paper we have a very simple goal – but in practice one that will be very hard to achieve,” says Carr. “We want to be the first nation in the history of the Olympic and Paralympic Games to improve its medal haul after hosting the Games.”

This means that Team GB is expected to bring back more than 65 medals from the 2016 Rio Olympics – and another 120 from the Paralympic Games. Carr says that the motives for doing this are clear. “Why do we think improving on the 2012 performance is a good idea? We think it’s a good idea for its own sake. The nation gets a great deal of joy, comfort and general sense of wellbeing from seeing people with the Union flag on them going well in the Olympics, as was proven last year. It massively boosts the nation’s morale.”

It is not just the mental state of Britons that is improved by a good performance at the Olympics. While the drive to increase participation at grassroots level is overseen and funded by Sport England, Carr recognises that UK Sport plays a part in getting people active.

“We have an important part to play in creating heroes and heroines – especially for young people – and creating them in other sports than just football,” he says. “Not everybody will want to play football, so by creating role models in athletics, boxing, sailing and a range of other team and individual sports, we’re able to show young people a wider choice and encourage more people to become active by trying sports that suits them and their skill sets.”

And once the role models have been created, Carr wants, quite literally, to sweat these assets at grassroots level by working in partnership with Sport England. From April 2013, each Team GB member has been contracted to do five days of what could be described as community service – visiting facilities and promoting sport to children.

“It’s so important to get our Olympic heroes to visit schools and clubs and to inspire youngsters on a person-to-person basis,” Carr says. “When we get the likes of Ben Ainsley, Jessica Ennis or Chris Hoy to appear in an environment thats familiar to kids – in their “own backyard” – it makes it easier for the youngsters to relate to the sport and especially the superstars. And when the athletes tell their stories, how they first started running or swimming or sailing in a centre or track just like theirs, it gets kids inspired. They feel it, they can touch it. They think “that could be me” – it’s very powerful.”

While the requirement for each athlete to make at least five appearances wasn’t introduced until April 2013, the system has been pretty much in full swing since the London Games. So far, 132 of the 172 medallists at London have made at least one school or community appearance, while 45 per cent of the London 2012 medallists have already made five or more visits.

Looking ahead, Carr feels that the sheer number of athletes in the programme will provide a great opportunity to increase participation through inspiration. “In total we’ve got around 1,300 athletes in our programme – a huge number,” he says. “You multiply that by five and you get an idea of how many visits there will be made to schools, sport clubs and leisure centres. On those days the heroes and heroines will provide a huge inspiration to not only the kids but the club coaches and trainers too.”

Coaching
When the talk turns to coaching, Carr emphasises that UK Sport’s remit doesn’t include driving policy on sports coaching at grassroots level. However, he has strong personal views on the matter, fearing that the amount of red tape and the time required to acquire qualifications is putting people off becoming coaches at their local clubs.

“I’d say that in general the coaching agenda has got to be very carefully managed. We all want to see better coaches, but we mustn’t have a one-size-fits all approach that means when it comes to passing exams and qualifying, that every single coach has got to go and do all this ‘stuff’ before they can actually start taking part and help out.

Everyone agrees that safety comes first and we should never allow unsuitable people to be in touch with youngsters, so it is clear that CRB checks have their place and everybody should be trained in the safety aspects of their sport. They should also have a reasonable amount of technical competence, but I can’t see any reason why we should try to turn every coach into a semi-professional or a county level trainer and push them up the ladder if all they want to do is help out at their local club.”

Carr adds that in an ideal world each coach would get help in identifying the minimum, ideal and maximum level of training they need to be successful at their intended level. “We shouldn’t design a coaching programme that assumes everybody’s going to go up the ladder – because the truth is that most people won’t. Most coaches will be working in community sport, so it’s important that perspective is kept. Forcing them to do a lot of training and give up valuable free time to acquire lots of qualifications before allowing them to even start coaching can be counterproductive.”

How and who to fund
While UK Sport isn’t responsible for setting out coaching programmes, it does have the power to decide which elite athletes and NGBs receive funding (and how much) during the four-year Olympic cycles. Athletes on UK Sport’s World Class Performance Programme receive financial support for their Olympic or Paralympic campaign via two channels – UK Sport provides sports governing bodies with direct funding in order for the NGBs to supply elite athletes with a support structure, while all athletes are also entitled to apply for individual Athlete Personal Awards (APA).

Each sport’s performance programme is overseen by a performance director, whose job it is to coordinate the set-up that athletes require – including coaching, training facilities, international competition and sports science and medicine. Meanwhile, the size of the APA an athlete receives is dependent on a means testing exercise. According to Carr, the way UK Sport decides on funding matters is highly knowledge-based yet practical.

“The best way to describe us is as an investment bank for sport,” he says. “An NGB wanting funding from us needs to have two things. The first is a track record. For us to invest substantial amounts of public money will require more than a sports governing body being good at giving PowerPoint presentations. An NGB will have to demonstrate that it’s able to take talented people and develop them into winners.

“The second thing you’ve got to have is a clear plan on how to achieve those medals. We’ve got to be able to see the plan and determine how you’ll go about completing it. So you can’t just wing it or say that ‘we’re OK because Dave’s brilliant and he’ll win us a medal’”.

The latest four-year funding cycle was made public in December 2012, with additional money announced a few months later. Overall, UK Sport will invest £355m in Team GB during the run up to Rio 2016 – the largest ever total and a 15 per cent increase on London 2012.

Despite the increase, five sports suffered cuts in funding and three – handball, table tennis and wrestling were left entirely without grants.

The most successful sports at London 2012 – athletics, rowing, cycling and boxing – received increases in their funding.

When asked to identify the sports where improvements could be made on the London 2012 performances in order to achieve the goal set for Rio, Carr says it’s too early to say – but that the funding decisions are a good indicator.

“We’ve got sports that consistently produce medals at major competitions and others that occasionally make it onto the podium – but should do more often.

“Elite Sport is all about margins: the difference between coming in at fourth place and winning a medal is often miniscule. Our role is to give the support which enables our sportspeople to make those vital small gains.”

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