Time for change in professional sport
Joanna Mucha, Minister of Sport and Tourism, presented the new concept of the Ministry of Sport and Tourism, the main goal is to change the financing of Polish sports and youth training policy.
At the core of the new strategy of the Ministry of Sport and Tourism was primarily the lack of satisfactory results at the Olympic Games in Athens, Beijing and London. However, not only the results were taken into account. Further prerequisites for reform in the Polish sports were inter alia, immutable, historical distribution of budgetary resources, lack of a reward system for rapidly growing sports and funding sports, which have been stagnant for years, lack of separate responsibility for the outcome which makes it impossible to take disciplinary action where the human factor failed and the lack of effective training and system solutions used in youth sports.
After summarizing the Olympic Games in London, it turned out that the Polish team had the least medal achievements among teams with over 200 athletes. Once again, a large part of the Polish team consisted of the players who were eliminated at the first level of competition (in the first round, qualifications, qualifications for the finals). 10 Polish players won medals, the number of places from 4 to 8 was 28, from 9 to 24 – 75, and even further places - 45.
In many cases, the reasons for poor performance of the Polish athletes were: training errors by the trainers during preparation and start, lack of professionalism of players; health problems of elite athletes, a small group of top players, a small group of highly qualified trainers, low level of use of science for the purposes of training (training process diagnostics).
All these factors clearly point to the need for broad changes in Polish sport.
Pilot programme
The first step to make these changes was to prepare a pilot training programme for talented youth, with which the Ministry of Sport and Tourism covered the top five sports: athletics, swimming, rowing, sailing and biathlon.
This is the first step towards a new model of training organization in Poland, where Polish sport associations will play a leading role in the whole process. They will get full substantive and financial freedom of organization in the training of younger juniors, juniors and seniors.
The pilot program assumes that in place of the Junior Voivodeship Teams (JVT), the associations will be able to set up the National 'B' Teams (NBT) to train players. Ultimately, the programme will cover all the youth sports in all disciplines, in which the funding for training will be maintained with the use of FRKF funds.
- Sports associations must break the habit of depending on funds obtained under the current rules.Funding will be granted to clearly and well-defined tasks and after fulfilment of certain conditions. The first one for will be to develop recovery plans for associations - said Joanna Mucha, Minister of Sport and Tourism.- Polish taxpayer should not fund sports association, which does not train young people, has no team in any of the junior categories, or no promising young players, does not prepare a credible plan for training - added the head of the sports department.
Talent identification
This means big changes in the training of young players. Olympic preparation and the start in the Olympic Games cannot be detached part of the sports training system. Sport associations should focus on the system to identify talents and to work with them at the stage of school and university sport, in clubs and in national teams. Only when combined in an efficiently functioning mechanism will all these elements guarantee success in the form of good performance of Polish athletes during major international events.
Changes in competitive sports
Another important element of the changes is to identify the strategic disciplines of competitive sport. To date, approximately PLN 170 million per year went to 37 Olympic sports associations and 34 non-Olympic associations.
- Financing and support for everything results in failure to finance and support anything.Therefore, the Ministry of Sport and Tourism has classified sports because of their strategic importance. After division, in the case of Olympic sports associations, we took into account, among others, the criteria such as the level of sports, coverage, the number of medals to win, the potential of players, the potential of training staff, NSA organizational level, training base - said Sebastian Chmara, member of the advisory team for the Minister of Sport and Tourism.
This way, the Olympic sports were divided into the following sports:
Strategic Sports(gold group) in the context of the promotion of the country and international sports competition, i.e. the sports which historically make the strength of Polish sport in the context of Olympic achievements in the last 3-4 Olympic cycles, winning medals systematically at Olympic Games and World Cups, with good organizational base (training base, coaching staff, well-organized NSAs), and a large potential of players, both seniors and juniors.
These include nine sports: Canoeing, cycling, track and field, skiing, swimming, weightlifting, rowing, wrestling, sailing.
Important sports (silver group) in the context of the promotion of the country and international sports competition:sports with great traditions, but smaller scale, in the past characterized by high efficiency in international competition, but with a very narrow highly qualified coaching staff (in some cases, lack thereof), a small number of players with high potential, even in the younger age categories, well organized, however, in recent years, undergoing a crisis both in relation to sports performance (except for speed skating and tennis) and the organization of the training process.
These included six sports: biathlon, judo, speed skating, sport shooting, fencing, tennis.
Minor sports (bronze group) in the context of the promotion of the country and because of the international sports competition:insignificant sports in terms of international competition for Olympic medals, without rich tradition, organizational structures and facilities as NSAs from gold and silver groups, a small group of highly qualified management and training personnel does not allow to hope for their rapid development and increase in sports level, similar small group of talented young people does not guarantee successes in the near future, an exception may be women's boxing as a new competition in the Olympic Games, strong international competition; it is difficult to achieve a high level internationally.
These included six sports: badminton, boxing, gymnastics, horse riding, archery, table tennis.
Sports with a minimum significance (not on podium) for the promotion of the country and international sports competition: NSAs with no major sports achievements in the past (with the exception of the modern pentathlon), with a weak organizational base (training staff, players’ facilities, training infrastructure), poorly organized internally, often with financial problems resulting from improper use of MST funds.
These include eight sports: sport acrobatics, curling, golf, figure skating, modern pentathlon, sledge sports, taekwondo, triathlon.
TEAM GAMES
Another category are team games, which were divided into two groups, classified by assessing the sports level, universality, scope, NSAs organizational structures, teams, coaching staff and prospects.
Group I: basketball, football, handball, volleyball, which has guaranteed high-funding from the budget and increased FRKF funds for the development of youth sport.
Group II: field hockey, ice hockey, rugby, which has reduced funding for seniors, it can only count on the support for interesting projects for the youth, and in the case of rugby, financing only 7-person teams (Olympic).
In the case of non-Olympic sports, the division was defined according to criteria that take into account the importance of the promotion of the country, interest in the sport, its mass scale and subsistence costs in relation to its coverage.
In non-Olympic sports, the classification is as follows:
Group I
mountaineering, sport bridge, traditional karate, kick boxing, motorboat sports and water skiing, air sports, motor sports, chess, taekwondo ITF
Group II
ju-jitsu, karate, karate Fudokan, bodybuilding and power lifting, Muaythai, sports orientation, sumo, wu-shu
Group III
baseball and softball, billiards, kendo, korfbal, bowling, scuba diving, radio orientation** ski bobbing, snooker and English billiards, modelling sports, skating sports, sled dog sports, sport dance, floorball, checkers, fishing*
* in alphabetical order
** lost the status of the Polish sports association by NSA judgment of 10.01.2013
RESERVE
The reserve of the budget will be used, among others on:
- Good training programs for young people
- Interesting initiatives to promote sport
- Activation programmes.