Sport England pledge to invest £120 million to help young athletes 

The funding will support athletes in grassroots environments, as well as those already on talent pathways such as formal high-performance sport programmes. It will be available for the 2025-2029 funding cycle.

The funding is being delivered by Sport England’s existing partnerships with more than 70 sports organisations, which includes the Backing the Best programme, run by SportsAid, with a further £1.5m of National Lottery funding.

Chief Executive of Sport England, Tim Hollingsworth, is excited by the funding opportunities and noted how it could provide opportunities outside of a sporting environment.

He commented on how talent pathways provide important life skills like teamwork, resilience and problem solving; something all young people can benefit from.

Through creating more inclusive talent pathways, Sport England want to increase participation in sport and boost diversity at a grassroots level in order to give more and better opportunities to all young people to explore and develop their potential.

“Affluence and activity levels are often closely linked; the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to be active. This starts at a grassroots level and goes right up to high-performance sport.

But we believe that all talented young athletes should have the opportunity to reach the Olympics or Paralympics – regardless of their background, bank balance or postcode.”

Tim Hollingsworth, Sport England