Pink calls for more attention to Olympic team sports

By Gerard Meagher, Sportsbeat

GREAT Britain volleyball player Andrew Pink has called on UK Sport to look beyond the medals table when dishing out funding and believes the coffers are concentrated in the hands of too few.

PACKED HOUSE: An artist's impression of the volleyball arena for the London 2012 Olympic Games

The 27-year-old, who was born in Kansas to an English father and now lives in London, is part of the Great Britain team which missed out on the second stage of qualifying for the European Championships earlier this summer.

Volleyball, a sport in which Great Britain have no Olympic history to speak of, saw its budget slashed by 57.3 per cent to £1.75m in January 2009, when UK Sport were faced with a £50m shortfall.

That was effectively doubled in December by UK Sport but Pink believes that it's time sports such as volleyball come in from the cold.  

"I'm well aware of the parameters that UK Sport set for funding and in some respects it does make sense," said Pink, who spent last season with Italian outfit Bassano.

"They're targeting success and I suppose it comes down to how you measure success.

"It's easy to look at the medals table and see where the success is or to look at sports that aren't getting results and question what the point is in pouring money into it.

"But at the same time you can also look at it and say why does that sport need so much funding if it's already providing medals.

"It begs the question, how many more medals can you win and it makes me wonder is that the best way to judge success.

"For us and for other minor sports, we'd like to see more enthusiasm to build up the sporting nation rather than the individual champions."