Hickey: athletes could retire before 2012

IRELAND’S top Olympic official has warned that some of the country’s elite athletes could be forced to retire before the London Games in 2012 if government funding continues to be cut.

Olympic Council of Ireland President Pat Hickey, sounded that warning yesterday as 70 of the country’s sporting bodies came together to call on the government to look kindly on their sector ahead of December’s budget.

Over €100m – almost one-third of the total – was shaved off the sports budget in 2009 and some of the country’s top athletes have also suffered a loss of individual sponsorships.

Asked if some athletes would have to contemplate retirement if their financial situation worsened, Hickey replied: “I think there is every chance if their funding is reduced in any dramatic shape or form. They could do just that because to qualify for the Olympic Games is like an Olympiad in itself. It is so difficult and they need the full support and full funding.”

Hickey was speaking alongside top officials from the FAI, IRFU and GAA, as well as Sarah O’Connor, chief executive of the Federation of Irish Sports, who spoke on behalf of 65 sporting bodies.

Hickey has long railed against the tidal wave of expectation that builds around Irish athletes for every summer Olympiad and he has warned that it will be bigger than ever at the next ‘home’ Games in 2012. Ireland has enjoyed encouraging performances at the last Olympic Games in Beijing, as well as at the World Athletic Championships in Berlin, on the back of increasing investment in sports by the government. However, Hickey has warned that such progress will be undone if the funding continues to be slashed.

“The expectation of the Irish public at that time will be just enormous on the athletes involved,” Hickey added, “and, if there is any cutback to the funding of the OCI or the athletes’ programme while we are trying to qualify for these Games, it will be an absolute disaster. We hope and expect that, come 2012, we will have turned around from this downturn. There will be a good feeling in the country again so that will be all the more reason for a large public expectation at those Games. This is why it is vital to continue the programmes which the athletes are on at the moment.”

Cutbacks have already hit Ireland’s chances of benefiting from the London Games, he pointed out. Five years ago, plans were first formulated to invite other countries to hold pre-Games training camps on these shores.

However, the installation of state-of-the-art facilities at the National Campus in Abbotstown have been placed on the back burner and it now seems that Ireland has missed out from a potential financial windfall.

“The word I’m hearing is that there is going to be no take-up. We did an audit of everything we had available and we tried to attract visiting countries. Some of them came here and looked over the facilities and they are just not up to standard.

“On top of that, if they locate in a UK city like Sheffield or Manchester or Liverpool, in addition to the fantastic facilities there, they receive somewhere between £50,000-100,000 (€55,323 to €110, 646) to help them locate in those venues.

“The French government are doing the same thing up around the Le Havre and Normandy areas. We are up against all that. I thought that Abbotstown would be finished and we could bring a lot of countries there for two or three months before they moved to London. We had a huge amount of interest in that from countries that don’t want to locate in the UK but, when they pulled the plug on Abbotstown, we had to forget about that.”