UK Sport To Review UK Athletics Funding After ‘difficulties’

UK Sport CEO Sally Munday has said the funding body will not make a ‘knee-jerk reaction’ when it comes to funding for UK Athletics (UKA).

This week, UKA confirmed that Zara Hyde Peters would not be taking up the role of CEO on December 1st, as was previously announced, after reports of a safeguarding issue regarding her husband, Mike Peters, came to light.

The news came at the end of a year in which the organisation also lost its former Chair, Richard Bowker, and its Performance Director, Neil Black, who stepped down from the role after former Nike Oregon Project Director Alberto Salazar – whom Black had previously defended – was banned from the sport for four years.

The governing body for athletics in the UK gets £27m in UK Sport funding each year, and although Munday hinted that governance issues could affect funding for UKA, she also said that the funding body would look to support the NGB to get “back on the right track”.

Munday said: “We do an annual review with every sport, looking at its performance and governance and how it is managed – and clearly the outcome of those reviews influences our discussions about how we invest.

“We have a responsibility to make sure we invest in sports that have the right standards, systems and culture. But I also know we want to enable sports to give the athletes the best chance of getting medals.

“They [UKA] are clearly having some difficulties and we are in conversation with them about how we can support them to ensure that athletics, from a leadership and governance point of view, gets back on the right track.

“It would be very easy in this situation to make a knee-jerk reaction. Things unfolded pretty quickly over the weekend and I think it’s appropriate to take a deep breath, step back, and have a conversation about what’s the best thing to do now to get things right for the long term.”