Riders like Ronan McLaughlin, who made the Worlds team in 2012, are out in the cold for funding (Photo by Toby Watson, homepage photo by Gary McIlroy)
No Irish male or female elite, U23 or junior road riders will be funded in 2013 after the Irish Sports Council significantly changed the funding criteria for cyclists.
Being a member of a WorldTour team now completely excludes a cyclist from being eligible for funding, whereas in the past simply riding at that level was enough to secure funding irrespective of a rider’s results.
Cycling also fares very badly in other ways under the new rules.
For example, riders must secure set results at the World Championships or Olympic Games to be eligible for even the lowest level of funding; €12,000 per year.
However, in most other sports merely qualifying for an Olympics or a Worlds is enough to secure funding. These sports include athletics, badminton boxing, clay pigeon shooting, judo, pentathlon, rowing and sailing.
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Indeed, of all of the sports where athletes are funded by the Irish Sports Council, it is only cycling, swimming and triathlon where Olympic qualification does not guarantee funding for an athlete.
Even in mountain biking and BMX, qualification for the Olympics or Worlds is not enough to secure any level of funding. This is despite these codes being much smaller, with fewer and smaller sponsors, than other sports where funding is awarded for Olympic and Worlds qualification.
The new Irish Sports Council funding criteria relate to all sports funded by the council, though the results needed by cyclists now seem much higher than for athletes in other sports.
The council wants to focus on funding athletes across all sports who will place the Olympic Games as their key target and build their training and competing around that goal.
It also wants to focus on funding athletes across sports where the national federations have some control over athletes in terms of, at least partly, dictating their competition and training programmes.
Because professional cyclists – from Continental and ProContinental level to WorldTour - must give priority to the demands of their trade teams rather than the wishes of Cycling Ireland, this is now counting against cyclists in qualifying for funding.
Top road riders like Dan Martin and Nicolas Roche are not eligible for funding in 2013, and it appears will not be eligible for the duration of the four-year Olympic cycle ahead. Philip Deignan and Matt Brammeier, both now Pro Continental riders, failed to achieve the results in 2012 they needed for funding next year.
And the same is the case for Ireland’s best U23 athletes in 2012. Riders like Sam Bennett, Sean Downey and Philip Lavery – all of whom are aged out of the U23 category for 2013 – will receive no funding next year.
Of that trio, Bennett will perhaps feel most aggrieved, with his 10th at the World Championships and 7th at the Europeans not enough to secure funding for 2013. He would have needed a top 5 placing at the Worlds or the top 3 at the Europeans in order to secure “international” funding, which was €12,000 last year.
In canoeing, a top 9 placing at the European U23 Championships secures €12,000 per year funding.
This grant aid is tax free, offering a young athlete at even the lowest level of funding €1,000 per month net, a significant amount for those trying to travel the world and compete without major sponsors or salaries.
Last year three road riders were funded; Roche, Martin and Deignan. The latter received €12,000 under the “international” class funding, after a season in which he was second on a stage in the 2011 Tour of Beijing (UCI WorldTour).
Roche secured €20,000 for 2012 because he won that 2011 Tour of Beijing stage and Martin’s 9th in the World Rankings in 2011, not to mention his stage win in the Vuelta and second in the Tour of Lombardy, all the same year, secured for him €20,000 in funding for 2012.
However, because the criteria for funding for 2013 has changed and is now dependent on very high results and excludes WorldTour riders, all of the road riders have missed out.
As well as WorldTour riders no longer being eligible, only general classification results are now counted in the funding criteria. High stage placings, including even stage wins in Grand Tours, now count for nothing in the new funding criteria for cycling drawn up by the Irish Sports Council. Up until now stage placings did count.
The new criteria means an Irish rider on a ProContinental team could win road stages in Grand Tours every year for the next four years, be picked for the Worlds in all of the next four years before qualifying for the Olympics and still not secure any funding.
But if a clay pigeon shooter even gets to the Olympics, he or she is guaranteed funding while a Worlds place in other sports is enough.
Aside from WorldTour or ProContinental level, riders who have ridden very well internationally in 2012 – Ronan McLaughlin, Peter Hawkins and Olivia Dillon to name but a few – also find themselves completely out in the cold under the new funding rules.
(For the specific results now needed by cyclists to gain funding, see the tables below this story.)
Martyn Irvine and Caroline Ryan will be funded next year, but both on the basis of their track results. Irvine won two silvers at the UCI World Cup in Glasgow last month which secures funding for him for next year.
Ryan won a bronze medal at the World Track Championships in Melbourne in April and will be funded next year on the basis of that.
While junior rider Ryan Mullen won a silver at the European TT Championships and was 9th in the Worlds TT, junior results do not count towards meeting funding criteria meaning he will get nothing for the coming season.
However, paracyclists are set to fare much better, with a number of riders to receive grants of up to €40,000 each next year from the sports council, such has been their success at the World Championships and London Paralympics during the season.
In cases where paracyclists are part of a tandem pairing it is only the paracyclist, and not their pilot, who receives the grant of up to €40,000 from the sports council.
However, the council insists that Cycling Ireland must fund the pilot to the same extent from its own budget.
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It means when riders like Catherine Walsh and James Brown secure Irish Sports Council grants of €40,000 apiece for 2013, their respective pilots Fran Meehan and Damien Shaw must be funded to the tune of €40,000 each next year by Cycling Ireland.
The funding for pilot riders comes out of Cycling Ireland’s high performance budget.
While specific details of the 2013 Irish Sports Council grants will not be officially available for around two months, informed sources indicate paracyclists are due to receive in the region of €200,000, with an additional estimated €100,000 to come from the Cycling Ireland high performance plan for pilot riders.
New Irish Sports Council funding criteria for road riders
(Cyclists would have needed to gain the following results in 2012 to gain funding for 2013 – WorldTour riders are not eligible for any funding)
Podium funding: €20,000 or €40,000
- Medallist at World Championships
- Medallist at Olympic Games
- 1st-3rd Overall in any European World Tour event or Major Tours (Giro Femine or La Route de France for women)
- 1st-3rd Points or KOH competition in one of the Grand Tours (Giro Femine or La Route de France for women)
World Class funding: €20,000
- 4th-12th in the World Championships
- 4th-12th in the Olympic Games
- 1st-10th Overall in any European World Tour event (and women’s equivalent of World Tour)
International funding: €12,000
- 13th-30th in the World Championships
- 13th-30th in the Olympic Games
- 1st-5th in the World U23 Championships
- 1st-3rd in the European U23 Championships
- 11th-20th overall in any European World Tour event (Giro Feminine and La Route de France for women)
- 1st-5th in a UCI 1.HC or 2.HC event
- 1st-5th on final GC in a European UCI 2.1 event
- 1st-3rd on final GC in a non European UCI 2.1 event
New Irish Sports Council funding criteria for TT and track riders
Podium funding: €20,000 or €40,000
- Medallist in the World Championships
- Medallist in the Olympic Games
- 1st-3rd in the individual TT of a Grand Tour – excluding prologues. (Giro Feminine and La Route de France for women - excluding prologues)
World Class funding: €20,000
- 4th-9th in the World Championships
- 4th-9th in the Olympic Games
- 4th-9th in the individual TT of a Grand Tour – excluding prologues. (Giro Feminine and La Route de France for women - excluding prologues)
- 1st-3rd in a World Cup Track event
- 1st-3rd in Senior European Championships Track event
International funding: €12,000
- 10th-15th in the World Championships(TT)
- 10th-15th in the Olympic Games (TT)
- 1st-3rd in U23 World Championship
- 10th-15th in the individual TT of a Grand Tour – excluding prologues. (Giro Feminine and La Route de France for women - excluding prologues)
- 4th-9th in a World Cup Track event
- 4th-9th in Senior European Championships Track event
- Men’s 4,000 metre individual pursuit below 4:25 in a UCI event or National Championship
- Women’s 3,000 metre individual pursuit below 3.37 in a UCI event or National Championship
- 4,000 metre team pursuit below 4:07 in a UCI event or National Championship
- 3,000m women’s team pursuit below 3:33 in a UCI event or National Championship
- Men’s 200 metre flying start below 10.60 in a UCI event or National Championship
- Women’s 200 metre flying start below 11.80 seconds in a UCI event or National Championship
(All times must be recorded in competition conditions)
New Irish Sports Council funding criteria for MTB
Podium funding: €20,000 or €40,000
- Medallist in the World Championships
- Medallist in the Olympic Games
- Medallist in the European Championships
World Class funding: €20,000
- 4th-12th in the World Championships
- 4th-12th in the Olympic Games
- 4th-12th in the European Championships
- Medallist or podium finish in a World Cup XCO Event (Senior Elite class only)
International funding: €12,000
- 13th-30th in the World Championships
- 13th-30th in the Olympic Games
- 13th-20th in the European Championships
- 1st-5th in the World U23 Championships
- 1st- 3rd in the European U23 Championships
- 4th-30th in a World Cup XCO event (finishing on the same lap as the winner)
New Irish Sports Council funding criteria for BMX
Podium funding: €20,000 or €40,000
- Medallist in the World Championships *
- Medallist in the Olympic Games
World Class funding: €20,000
- 1st-3rd in a World Cup event
- 4th-8th in the World Championships *
- 4th-8th in the Olympic Games
International funding: €12,000
- 9th-30th in the World Championships*
- 1st-5th European Championships
- 4th-12th in a World Cup event
(*Refers to Elite Men/Women class only in main competition)
NOTE: The sums of money in the above lists are based on what was awarded in 2012 for the three tiers of funding; podium, world class and international.
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