The same budget differently - football winning

Zdroj: SME, Marian Simo

If minister signs the document, the winner will be football. The question is, if the first step of his successor after the election in March, will not cancel it, as it is being heavily opposed. According to the math of Sme daily, the new system would bring to football 1,5 million euro more than last year. Tennis would get more twice that much than last year and cycling more 3,5 times more. This reform would help the sports that already have “big money” in them. On the other hand, sports that have less commercial potential would get worse. This includes the sports that were successful at the Olympics in the past – canoe slalom, speed canoes, swimming, shooting, judo, biathlon, snowboard or wrestling.
  
The sport unions already got 70% of their usual budget. The remaining 30% should be divided according to the new system. Since 2013, all of the money should be divided in a new way.

During the government of Robert Fico, ice hockey was number one sport in Slovakia. New system will give the sport less money too. The reason is new formula brought by an expert team lead by minister´s advisor Jozef Tokos. According to formula: Share of Finances = success x popularity. Sport unions had only 4 days for annotation and there was no public discussion. The reason is early election that is going to be held on March 10. Tokos says that it a minister´s competence to sign such a change and that it does not have to be discussed by the government. Another member of the team – successful hockey coach Jan Filc added that they are the expert team of current minister and that while they tried to objectify the criteria with their best conscience, they would like to see them come to life during his era.

Another member of the team, Richard Galovic, who is also a member of a Canoe Slalom Union thought that there will not be a big opposition inside the sport movement. That was no true, as plenty of sport unions already contacted the Ministry with their objections. Sport Unions Confederation has two major objections. First is that before the major change of rules, there should have been the major change of conception. The other is that it is unacceptable to stand the inexact index of popularity next to exact index of success. The data for popularity come from the defective survey, monitor of Slovak media and world televisions.

Head of Shooting union, Miroslav Benca thinks that if someone want to hide anything, it is easy to do so through graphs, charts and formulas. His sport, which is the second most successful in Slovakia loses tragically. Last year they received 700 900 euro from the state, next year it should be only 172 503 euro. Losing that much money means the chance of raising another Gonci or Stefecekova is falling.

Head of Artistic Gymnastics, Jan Novak curses: Our sport is one of the most popular within the Olympics, but our index is 0,02%. Popularity cannot be on the same level as success.

Victoria 2 – win or loss?
Victoria means victory, in this case it can be a loss. Benca says that this project is the continuum of Victoria project from 2005. It was rejected that time and 95% of the sport movement was satisfied. The system this group created was set to be good for its members. Head of the group Tokos denies: We are the expert team; no one is here for a specific sport. The basic philosophy of the team was: Success is not only medal and tears. It should also have an impact on social events, it should make people incorporate sport into their lives, otherwise it would be wasted chance, such as in case of hockey gold from 2002.