Two and a half years away, an almost taboo phrase for Spanish Olympism of the last three decades is left in writing, exposed black on white. The goal for Paris 2024assures the Higher Sports Council, it is overcome the harvest of medals of Barcelona 1992, Spanish peak with 22 metals, 13 of them gold. The 20 medals at Athens 2004 and London 2012 and the seven titles at Rio 2016 are the biggest records achieved since then. This is how El Periódico de España collects it.
To achieve such an ambitious challenge, the Government has decided to launch a project that represents a change in the strategy followed historically by Spanish Olympism, traditionally more inclined to ‘coffee for all’ than to empowerment of excellence. The very name of the initiative, Team Spain Elite, speaks clearly of the determination to take a direction more typical of other countries such as the United Kingdom or the Netherlands so far.
This program, as announced on Wednesday by the president of the CSD, José Manuel Franco, will be endowed with 48 million euros, 16 for each of the three years budgets that remain until the Olympic event in Paris. The destination of these items will be “to finance the preparation of those athletes who, always based on technical criteria, have more chances to get a medal“.
In Search of Excellence
“It’s a program that seek excellenceselecting very very well who are the athletes who have the most medal options”, develops a government source, about a selection that will be made in a commission made up of the CSD, the Spanish Olympic Committee and the federations involved.
And what kind of expenses will the program cover? “Imagine that an athlete needs to train in a place abroad, where they have some very powerful installations, to increase your chances of getting a medal. Well, this program will pay for it,” they exemplify from the CSD.
Although perhaps the most striking thing about the Team España Elite program is not so much the destination of its millionaire funds as its origin. Those 48 million euros, which on paper come from the CSD’s budget, in reality will be paid by the football clubs of First and Second division.
This additional economic item was one of the agreements reached during the so-called Viana Pacts, the three-way commitment acquired in April 2020 by CSD (still with Irene Lozano as president and secretary of state), LaLiga and the RFEF to agree on the return of sports activity and rescue the disciplines and clubs most affected by the pandemic.
television rights
One of the legs of that agreement was the modification of Royal Decree Law 5/2015 that regulates the joint marketing of LaLiga’s audiovisual rights. In said text, it was originally collected that until 1.5% of television income would go to the CSD.
The pact reached in the spring of 2020 contemplated adding a new additional item for the Government: “1.5% will be delivered to the CSD, which will allocate it to the promotion, promotion and dissemination of federated, Olympic and Paralympic sportsas well as the internationalization of Spanish sport”.
Amounts that in the two previous years were destined to rescue and help other leagues during the pandemic, mainly the main men’s handball (Asobal League) and basketball (ACB League) competitions.
From that 1.5% comes the 16 million euros (of the total of around 51 that LaLiga contributes a year) that the CSD will allocate to its new Olympic program, which Franco announced during his speech at the Assembly of the Spanish Sports Association (ADESP), in which more than 50 national sports federations participated.
ADO plan
The birth of Team España Elite does not imply the disappearance of the ADO Plan, a public-private financing program devised for Barcelona 92 that grants scholarships to Olympic athletes. They emphasize from the CSD that they are different and complementary programs, because while ADO distributes a multitude of scholarships (383 in 2021)the new project is aimed at the elite of national sport.
In any case, the reform of an ADO Plan in crisis for many years is pending due to the loss of interest shown by private entities and the loss of income from RTVEwhich have caused the CSD to assume an increasing part of the total financing.
