Outgoing UK Sport chair Dame Katherine Grainger says it’s “irritating” that Britain isn’t staging extra main occasions over the subsequent decade, warning of “an enormous hole”.
“We danger public funding, we danger international repute, we danger alternatives for athletes,” the top of the funding company instructed BBC Sport.
The previous Olympic rowing champion is leaving her function as essentially the most senior determine in Olympic and Paralympic sport after eight years in cost.
In addition to funding elite athletes, UK Sport tries to make sure the nation bids for and levels the world’s greatest occasions.
“We have an awesome repute for it,” she mentioned. “However I believe we have got challenges going ahead.
“Now we have just a few [events] lined up. However in relation to ‘mega-events’, after 2028 we have got nothing safe.”
The variety of main occasions being hosted within the UK has been declining because the begin of the last decade.
Britain is about to host the ladies’s rugby union World Cup in England this 12 months, together with the 2026 Commonwealth Video games in Glasgow, and the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham.
Final week, it was confirmed that the lads’s and girls’s Tour de France races will each start in Britain in 2027. In soccer, the UK and Eire are staging the 2028 males’s European Championship.
However whereas the house nations have additionally expressed an intention to submit a joint bid for the 2035 ladies’s soccer World Cup, Grainger says extra must be accomplished.
“We do not need fallow years,” she mentioned. “After 2028, we do not actually have something named. That’s fairly an enormous hole.
“There are many occasions that also are there for the taking. It is fairly apparent why these mega-events are so essential to the nation, and but perhaps we have not made the case clear.
“Perhaps it is a very troublesome time, particularly for presidency to assist financially, however there’s one thing we nonetheless may do to get extra safety… We do want extra to ensure we have got constant eyeballs on this nation, on what we’re doing in sport.
“Nobody can get complacent of our place inside international sport, and I believe we nonetheless ought to have huge ambitions of what we will do subsequent, and that may take collaboration.”
Whereas UK Sport has secured a document £330m authorities funding bundle for its sports activities over the subsequent 4 years to pursue medals on the LA 2028 Video games, it’s hoping for extra monetary backing to bid for main occasions.
Successful bids can require a number of years of campaigning, and Grainger highlighted the 2029 World Athletics Championships, the 2030 Solheim Cup and the 2031 Ryder Cup as doable targets.
She additionally mentioned there was “a extremely good dialog” available across the Particular Olympics for individuals with mental disabilities. It presently sits outdoors UK Sport’s funding remit, and the occasion has by no means been staged within the UK.
The DCMS has been approached for remark.
