Will Sagan write to the Prime Minister, too?

Published in Slovak Sport daily

Olympic champions Martikán and the Hochschorner brothers have written to the Prime Minister. They explained the chaos caused to their sport by the unexpected withdrawal of their main commercial sponsor - a sponsor mostly owned by the state. Unpleasant. They need more help. Their appeal has revived the broader issue of how little money flows into Slovak sport from the state and from state-influenced companies. A few days ago, a commentator from Sport Daily summed it up by saying that a good sports minister and a good Slovak Olympic Committee (SOV) president ran into a bad finance minister because the key legislative changes didn’t get through him. Why not? Because last year’s attempt to blow up the state budget with proposals for tax relief and other fiscal impacts during a period of consolidation was never going to make it past any finance minister - Kažimír, Mikloš, or even Fantozzi. That’s not the way forward. At least not yet.

If we want to discuss the funding of sport seriously, it has to be done honestly. It’s not possible to distribute our tax money to sports federations based on their individual “needs.” Everyone thinks they deserve more. The Federation of Space Sports would surely claim it needs the most. A rocket launch from Horné Plachtince with a two-person crew of an astronaut and a politician would cost a fortune, but it would guarantee Slovakia global success and attention. Even the ski slope near Kraków would take notice.

The idea of distributing funding for national teams and talented youth based on clear, transparent, and measurable criteria was co-proposed by the author of this article a year and a half ago and even five years before that. So far, Minister Čaplovič has largely resisted the pressure to hand out money based on “needs” (we’ll leave out investments and events). He adopted the proposal to distribute the largest part of the budget according to a formula with slightly modified criteria. After being approved by the Council for Sports Representation a month ago, the plan is now on track to make him the first sports minister to establish systematic rules. One last step remains: to fix the entirely flawed athlete ranking system. Fingers crossed!

And what about the complainers? Successful canoe slalom, thanks to clever federation management, has already extracted the maximum from the state. Olympic medalists and strong medal contenders should absolutely receive excellent support. Last year’s proposal offered them more than the current one does. But state funding for the federation as a whole inevitably hits hard numbers: popularity, especially international, and the number of registered youth (607 canoeists compared to 329,000 footballers). Also, a single sport at the global level should ideally be represented by a single entity at the national level. Yet we have pairs like “canoe slalom – sprint canoeing” being funded separately. The honest solution is for the ministry and the SOV to fix this, even if it requires a transitional period.

And what about the other dissatisfied federations? In other words, almost all of them, as usual? Just the day before yesterday, the Confederation of Sports Federations expressed sorrow over the situation of the smallest federations. Among the larger ones, volleyball feels hard done by because of its place in the “success” rankings, especially since their own global federation doesn’t compile these rankings ideally. Will they now create a special “most beautiful beach volleyball federation”? In cycling, stage wins at the Tour de France don’t count in the funding formula. The track cycling federation hasn’t yet split off from the main one. It would be better to just write to the Prime Minister. Anyone who hasn’t done so yet can get in touch with the Government Office. General sponsors are handled on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as the government meets on Wednesdays...