Every four years Sport UK spends around £100m in lottery money to make sure athletes have the best training facilities, coaching and medical care. But it is the success of the £2bn invested by Sport England that has proved more questionable.
The £2bn that has been ploughed into developing grassroots has failed to stem a steady drop off in participation .
More than £279m has been invested in developing swimming facilities in England since 1994. But, according to the Guardian audit, most of the money has been drained by the upkeep of ageing and decrepit pools, and many communities have seen their swimming baths disappear.
Across the UK there are only 20 pools of 50m Olympic length and only one, in Sheffield, which has enough lanes to qualify as an Olympic pool.
Tennis has received more than £87m in lottery funding plus an annual lump sum of around £25m from Wimbledon. But the Lawn Tennis Association claims it would need an extra £2bn to match the provision in countries like France.
The Guardian also learnt that in the past decade, 500 recreational sports centres have closed and local authorities claim they face a £500m repair bill to upgrade existing facilities.
But UK Athletics says its lottery investment from Sport England of more than £150m has pushed it to near the top of the facilities league table with more than 270 purpose built outdoor stadiums and 20 indoor arenas around the UK.
Cycling too has benefited from the opening of the Manchester Velodrome for the Commonwealth Games and subsequent lottery funding of £1.7m.
The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show that across the UK in 2002 [the most recent figures], only 43 per cent regularly took part in sport, compared to 46 per cent in 1996.
