Zoe Smith in her latest interview told reporters that the UK’s sort funding cuts from two years ago has left her and many other top British athletes in struggling donations to make it to Tokyo Games of 2020.
Zoe revealed the news with blunt honesty. She told reporters that, “I make next to nothing as I earn only a little above minimum wage while working at a bubble tea café. This is why I don’t have money to put aside for World Championship fund.
While she has said all this with a shrug and a laugh, there is clearly something very wrong about all of this. A Commonwealth Gold Medalist and an Olympian who hails from one of the richest countries of the World has to train, work and also appeal for donations juts to make it into the next Olympics.
Smith is an athlete of Weightlifting discipline which suffered from 2016’s cutback from UK Sport. This was amongst other sports like basketball, badminton, wheelchair rugby and raft that were cut down of funding because they were unlikely to win more than one medal at the Tokyo Games of 2020.
This funding cut off ahs left Smith without any coaching, physio and strength conditioning coach along with training camps and accommodations given to weightlifters at Loughborough University.
Although Smith can carry on without the prior facilitations but she certainly cannot do without 10,000 rounds needed for six qualifying matches that are to be held around the globe. She has opened up a GoFundMe page but in the end she and her teammates have to gather this money all by themselves.
This is really strange for a country that usually spends about 266 million British pounds on its Olympic funding. While many sports receive millions of pounds per year; weightlifting and other such outcast sports are being left to dirt without a single penny.
