English Chess Forum

Phil Neatherway mentions the funding received by UK Sports in the Table-Tennis thread. Here are the amounts granted by UK Sport funding for the four years from the Beijing Olympics to now (ie four financial years)

Athletics £25,148,000
Archery £4,408,000
Badminton £7,434,900
Basketball £8,599,000
Boxing £9,551,400
Canoeing £16,176,000
Cycling £26,032,00
Diving £6,535,700
Equestrian £13,395,00
Fencing £2,529,335
Gymnastics £10,770,660
Handball £2,294,721
Hockey £15.013,000
Judo £7,498,000
Modern Pentathlon £6,288,000
Rowing £27,287,600
Sailing £22,942,700
Shooting £2,461,866
Swimming £25,144,600
Synchronised Swimming £3,398,300
Table Tennis £1,213.848
Taekwando £4,833,000
Triathlon £5,291,00
Volley Ball £3,536,077
Water Polo £2,928.039
Weightlifting £1,365,157
Wrestling £1,435,210

Tennis was nil and I presume the same for football.

You understand now why UK Sport refuses to recognise chess as a sport.

Because it's not a sport?

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Head of Chess at Rydal Penrhos Preparatory School, Colwyn Bay.

http://andrewrcamp.blogspot.com/

£25M on swimming was money well spent...

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http://www.yorkshirechess.org

Chess is not recognised as a sport in the United Kingdom but is recognised as such in every other European country. It is also recognised by the International Olympic Committee.

As we are all aware chess lost its government funding after the 2010 election; had it been recognised as a sport we might have received some funding from UK Sport instead of them squandering government money on handball, synchronised swimming..................etc

No it isn't.

I'm only going on memory from what was said at those BCF Board meetings I attended; perhaps Denmark was mentioned as not recognising chess as a sport? I could spend a deal of time researching this but if you have the information instantly to hand maybe you can advise on this on the lines of how many recognise chess?

I think the funding reflected what happened in Beijing, so sports successful in London will continue with heavy funding, and those who fell short of target will see funding cuts

British swimming used to be in a mess, but as anyone will know who visited the chess British in Sheffield last year and saw Ponds Forge dominated visually by the British Gas national (?) swimming championships, they are organised now - they needed to get in an Australian swimming coach to change attitudes, but it has produced results

Lots of other nations take swimming very seriously, the USA has dominated here and GB and Australia have both suffered results wise

The PM has announced this morning greater spending on Elite sport to try and avoid he problems the Australians experienced after Sydney

I think chess could learn from swimming at grass roots level, and at the Elite level from cycling

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Any postings on here represent my personal views and should not be taken as representative of the Manchester Chess Federation

Google could not find easily a list of countries, but these links might be interesting:
1) http://www.fide.com/fide/fide-world-che ... ation.html
"with 170 member federations" ... "Chess is an affiliate member, or fully recognized by, National Olympic Committees in 115 countries, and chess as a sport is recognized in 105 countries."
60% of the countries affiliated to FIDE recognize chess as a sport.
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_sp ... zed_sports
"The governing bodies of following sports, though not contested in the Olympic Games, are recognized by the IOC:" ... "chess"
Aagin the IOC seems to consider chess as a sport. The door is open, if golf is going to make it to the next Olympics games, there's always hope (although the whole industry around golf is probably few order of magnitude richer than chess and that might have had an impact)

Given the statement at point 1) the list of countries might be obtained from FIDE if anyone wants to ask

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I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.

Sailing £22,942,700
Swimming £25,144,600
Synchronised Swimming £3,398,300
Water Polo £2,928.039

See the connection?
They are solid supporters of aquatic sports.

Torquay is by the seaside, lets hold the British Championship in the sea and get a piece of the action.

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http://www.redhotpawn.com/blog/blogindex.php
http://www.chessedinburgh.co.uk/chandler.php

Diving chess has already been done:

http://digitaljournal.com/article/311013

I think I will use these funding figures when I contact my MP about funding for chess. My MP since the 2010 election is Nicola Blackwood. Has anyone ever heard of her? I didn't have much time for her predecessor, Evan Harris, but it has to be said he as a friend to chess.

In the context of this discussion, it wouldn't make any difference.

UK Sport and Sport England currently fund 46 sports. In my capacity as the ECF Representative at the Sport and Recreation Alliance, I attended a presentation a couple of years ago by someone from the latter body. It was made very clear that there was no prospect in the foreseeable future of any additional sports being funded. This statement was received with understandable disappointment by the representatives of recognised but non-funded sports.

The money which you allege has been squandered on sports which you happen not to like is not "government money". It comes from the proceeds of the National Lottery and no-one is obliged to buy tickets.

In my view chess is not a sport. I remember getting 1.7k of signatures when 10 years of age for the petition.....including 7 celebrities(Dawn French and Lenny Henry to name but 2). However, Id only want it recognised for pure greed(money).

I know the age old thing that you need to maintain concentration. But there is very little physical movement in chess , it can't be a sport.
What does annoy me a bit however is the amount of children that play the UK Chess Challenge and I look at the millions of pounds sports like Handball get. I can safely say chess at a junior level outguns 80% of these in junior participation.

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I love sleep, I need 8 hours a day and about 10 at night - Bill Hicks
I would die happy if I beat Wood Green in the Eastman Cup final - Richmond LL captain.
We must find Cigerettes, this is our mission for the rest of the night(at 5am) - Tkachiev