Almost on the last track

Perhaps it sounds bizarre, but in terms of sport the government of Iveta Radičová was essentially close to the fulfillment of its Program Declaration (PD). Certainly, priorities of the last government is quite clearly different from the analysis of the situation in sport by the Slovak Olympic Committee (Sport in Slovakia and the conditions of its development), but it shows a different perspective and priorities of the team of Minister of Education Eugen  Jurzyca and representatives of Slovak sports movement.

The main purpose of the Jurzyca's program is not to increase grants to the sport generally, which is the alpha and omega of the analysis of Slovak Olympic Committee, but the distribution of money and higher emphasis on youth talent and entertainment. It is fact that Jurzyca started to fulfill this program. Also, the PD points to talk about clear rules for the allocation of grants and investment funding of national significance on the base of competition – as was confirmed by project of funding the National Football Stadium (NFS) and the start of funding this year already. Great sport reform is waiting for approval. It should be proposed to the Government later this month – but  we can't expect more than approval for this program by this government.

Cynically said, it is like when the athlete has set the bar for height 180 cm and has jumped it on the second attempt with an elegant flop. If the audience is satisfied with such a height and aesthetics, there is nothing to complain about. On the other hand there are sports fans who expect more – especially more money. But we have to admit that sports associations and representation receive the amount of about € 35 millions from the state for a long time, doesn´t matter if the Minister was Milan Ftáčnik (SDL), Martin Fronc (KDH), Ján Mikolaj (SNS) or the last one Eugen Jurzyca (SDKÚ). The exception of this trend was year 2010 when the government allocated over 40 million funding for reconstruction of  the ice hockey arena of Ondrej Nepela in Bratislava and sport funding summed up to 74.5 million euro.  Now let us add that according to the report of Supreme Audit Office of the Slovak Republic (NKU), the construction of the stadium was overpriced.

The government of Radičová will last no longer than only a few weeks, so nobody can expect much. Maybe there will be enough time to allocate the grants for this year, maybe they will be able to approve funding project for the National football stadium or big reform of the sport, but the fate of NFS and fate of the reform will be in the hands of the next Cabinet. A result of an election may be different. Maybe the current right-wing block will continue, maybe there will appear the radical change, or there will be a mix of today's coalition and the opposition.

We have to recall that before the election in 2010 the largest athletic program was presented by the political subject the Freedom and Solidarity (probably because it's author was a sport publicist Andrej Miklánek), but Minister of sport became SDKÚ nominee whose election program affected sport minimally. The logical consequence was that the sport went under the competence of people from Jurzyca´s former team, who had previously participated in sports project Victoria. A new look of government sport program will probably depend on the decisions of voters.

Sports program of SDKÚ- DS was in their election program almost invisible, but at this time of upcoming elections we can sense the vision of sport reforms by SDKÚ. Even if they were in government for the further period, probably it would not be different. Neither the the priorities (national team, youth and talents) or methods ("more finance for reform "). In recent days, the Ministry published a proposal of sport funding based on clear and known rules (Success, popularity, youth base, the financial cost of sport). Although the minister's team Chief Jozef Tokos believes that this system will persist even after the election, the future of the whole program will be the decision of voters.