Reid to get financial aid from Great Britain

BY PAUL A REID Observer writer

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

FORMER Jamaican jumper Julian Reid is one of five athletes who changed allegiances to Great Britain recently to be promised financial aid as they get their Olympic campaigns underway.

A report carried on the website of The Mail newspaper earlier this month said Reid, who switched allegiance this year, after last appearing for Jamaica two years ago at the World Championships in Berlin, will receive funding from the National Lottery, one of the main sponsors of British sports.

World Class Performance Programme packages, given to athletes in the top funding band, are worth around £70,000 a year in living expenses, medical support, travel costs and use of high performance centres.

Reid, who competed at the Supreme Ventures National Trials in June, failed to make the minimum standards in either the long or triple jump to compete at the IAAF World Championships, but represented Great Britain at the World University Games in China.

Meanwhile, another Jamaican, high jumper Germaine Mason who won an Olympic silver medal for Great Britain, was axed from the lists, along with several other British representatives.

The other four who were receiving funding for the first time are American-born 400m runner Shana Cox, American-born hurdler Tiffany Porter, Cuban-born long jumper Yamile Aldama and Anguillan-born long jumper Shara Proctor.

The controversial decision saw several other British athletes, including Mason, Olympic bronze medallist Kelly Sotherton and double Commonwealth Games gold medallist Leon Baptiste among 34 who were cut from the funding.

Charles van Commenee, Britain's head coach, was quoted by the newspaper as defending the move by saying it was a "results-driven business".

"We operate in a results-driven business in which clear decisions have to be made if athletes are not performing to the high standards we set," said Van Commenee, who has set a target of eight medals, including one gold, in London.

The wholesale wooing of athletes into the British set-up has not gone over well in some quarters and they have been dubbed 'Plastic Brits'.