As the National Lottery approaches its 30th birthday, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson has paid tribute to the ‘game changing’ effect it has had on Welsh sport at all levels.
Tanni, one of Britain's greatest Paralympic athletes, was already a household name and at the peak of her career when lottery funding was introduced into elite sport in 1997.
By then, she had competed at three Paralympic Games, winning 10 medals – five of which were Golds.
But she saw first-hand how the sudden flow of lottery funding helped to take British performances to new heights. Thanks to players of the National Lottery, athletes across the country were benefiting from world-class coaching, comprehensive medical support and cutting-edge facilities. The days of training in a car park in Bridgend were over!!
Tanni, who is the Chair of Sport Wales, said: “Earlier in my career, you were limited where you could train, so in the winter we would often use a multi-storey car park, going up and down the ramps!
“But thanks to the National Lottery, we suddenly had fantastic facilities being built in Wales, such as the National Indoor Athletics Centre in Cardiff and the Wales National Pool in Swansea.
“It was also noticeable how the lottery-funded facilities helped to drive up the standards elsewhere. For example, I used to train a lot at Loughborough, which already had excellent facilities, but they made several further improvements in order to keep up.”
Tanni continued: “The financial impact of lottery funding was huge for athletes in the late 90s. The vast majority of us had jobs. For me personally, it meant that I was able to move to a part-time job.
“The lottery funding gave me more time to do what I needed to do each day. Crucially, it gave me headspace which was really important to me. Juggling a full-time job with the demands of training had been very tiring – finally I was able to rest, prepare meals and recover properly.
“In sport now, we focus a lot on creating the best possible environments for our athletes so that they can develop not just as performers but as well-rounded people. We’ve learned a lot from previous eras, and we wouldn’t be where we are now without National Lottery funding making that possible.
“For the younger athletes who were just starting their careers in the late 90s, you could clearly see the difference it was making to them in terms of the number of competitions that they and their coaches could now attend. Because of this, athletes were able to progress and improve much quicker than they would have done without lottery money.”
