After “intense negotiations” with Olympic Solidarity and the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO), the Barbados Olympic Association (BOA) will now have an additional $2 million to pump into sport over the next quadrennial.
This is one of the major revelations coming out of an almost hour-long media briefing at the Olympic Centre yesterday morning. It is separate from the other funding these bodies already provide.
“We anticipate that we will receive approximately US$250 000 (BDS$500 000) per annum to assist us with training and preparation of teams for the Pan American, Central American and Olympic Games which are slated for Rio in 2016,” said BOA secretary general Erskine Simmons.
Next year, the BOA will send teams to the Commonwealth Games (July) in Scotland, the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China, the following month and the Central American and Caribbean Games in Vera Cruz, Mexico, in November.
Some of that funding will be used to build organizational capacity for the member federations. During the first quarter meeting with the 32 members, the majority indicated this was an area that needed strengthening.
“In order to develop high quality athletes, our national federations must be functioning efficiently,” Simmons stressed. “They must be functioning efficiently in order for this to work.”
President Steve Stoute said they were able to get the annual funding increased from BDS$200 000 to $500 000.
“It is not only allocated for training and preparation. It can also be used for special projects.
“We are concerned that in many cases our sports organizations lack organizational capabilities despite the fact that our Olympic Academy continually runs courses and programmes. Many of the individuals who graduate from these courses and programmes do not find themselves in the hierarchy of the national federations,” Stoute said.
“It is the national federations on which we rely to provide us the talent to take to the various games. So, at the end of the day, unless we have well-functioning, well-organized national federations, we will always be experiencing difficulties in developing top quality athletes.”
Stoute said in the past four years, Barbados had drawn down around $800 000 from Olympic Solidarity for special projects outside of the funding it normally provided, which was allocated primarily for management, projects, training and preparation of athletes.
Only Cuba, with a population of 12 million, and Haiti, with seven million – and special needs – have accessed more funding.
Meanwhile, the BOA has not given up on building a mini indoor facility to complement the Wildey Gymnasium.
The idea was first mooted several years ago, and Stoute said although it was still in the planning stages, they had established a building committee which is expected to make a presentation at the next board meeting.
The artist’s impression, plans and a cost for the building should be presented by chairman Ralph Johnson, vice-president of the BOA.
Several years ago, some of the national federations cried out about the prohibitive costs of renting the Wildey Gymnasium and the BOA put forward the idea of building the indoor facility.
Stoute said sports such as boxing, which had won medals at major games, gymnastics, judo, fencing and badminton, among others, would operate from that facility, but other sports, including rugby and surfing, had also expressed an interest in having an indoor facility so they could train.
