Miss-Delectable

Public donation helps deaf athletes compete - Times Online

The public has rallied to the cause of deaf athletes hit by funding cuts by raising £150,000 to help to send a 150-strong Great Britain team to the Summer Deaflympics next year.

As revealed by The Times last month, Britain's leading deaf athletes faced missing out on the chance to represent their country after the Government diverted their funding to the London 2012 Olympic Games. UK Deaf Sport (UKDS) said that the decision by UK Sport, the elite funding agency, to stop its annual £42,000 grant in March this year would devastate the hopes of medal contenders in training for the Games, in Taipei in September 2009, and would further marginalise the nine million people in Britain with hearing loss.

Within six days of the article's publication, the organisation - the leaders of which are working on a voluntary basis after sacking its staff - had received pledges amounting to £150,000. Donors included David Jones, the former chief executive of Next, Stanley Fink, the City hedge-fund veteran, Sir Harry Solomon, the co-founder of Hillsdown Holdings, and Peter Goldstein, co-founder of Superdrug. Tracy Hoodless, of Champion Recruitment, which also made a donation, said: “It seems wrong that something as important as this in the lives of deaf athletes is not being funded by the authorities, particularly since they are supposed to be championing diversity in all aspects of life.”

UKDS welcomed the “generous” donations, which mean that there will be a Great Britain team at the Deaflympics, but said that the total fell short of the £500,000 required to send all its athletes to Taipei. It has called on the Government to reinstate stable, year-on-year funding, arguing that other nations, such as Sweden and Norway, give money directly to deaf sport. “It is imperative we secure long-term funding for the future development of Deaflympics and all other deaf sports in Britain,” Josef Baines, the UKDS secretary, said. “Most deaf athletes do not always get the opportunity to participate in mainstream sport because of scarce funding opportunities.”

The Deaflympics was established in 1924 by nine European nations, including Britain. The Silent Games were held in Paris that year, with 148 participants, marking the first Games dedicated to athletes with a disability. Since then, it has grown to encompass 2,200 athletes from 67 countries. Britain, comprising a team of 80 athletes in eight sports, won 16 medals at the most recent Games, in Melbourne in 2005 - more than Australia, the host nation.

UK Sport argued that its funding priorities were the 2008 Games in Beijing and the 2012 Games in London and that its pot of money would not stretch to all sporting causes. It said that it notified UKDS of its decision to halt funding three years ago, to allow the organisation time to plan.

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