A JUDO Paralympics medallist has criticised the sports’s ruling body for insisting athletes quit Scotland and base themselves down south to get vital funding.
Judo medallists Sam Ingram and Gemma Gibbons have refused to relocate from Edinburgh at the demand of the sport’s governing body.
The British Judo Association has told athletes that to get funding and join the 2017 world class performance programme, they have to be based 300 miles away at the three-year-old British Judo Centre of Excellence at Walsall in the west Midlands
Two-time Paralympics medallist Sam Ingram, who has been based at the JudoScotland National Training Centre in Ratho where he trains alongside a number of GB’s top Olympic judoka, has been forced to decline funding worth £15,000 a year.
Mr Ingram, who was born with genetic eye condition corneal dystrophy, meaning he cannot see in colour and has no central vision, said the BJA were “blackmailing” athletes to move to England.
He said: “If this centre in Scotland wasn’t producing results, I could understand it but it is the opposite. I feel I have given a lot and don’t feel as if there behaviour is fair.”
The 31-year-old is doing a Masters in sports policy and management and international development at the University of Edinburgh and is due to marry 25-year-old fiancee Jodie Mullen, also a judo competitor this year.
Mr Ingram secured a European Championships bronze last year, after silver at the London 2012 Paralympics and 2010 World Championships. His first medals were bronzes at the Beijing 2008 Paralympics and the 2007 European Championships.
Judo centre of excellence in the west Midlands was opened in 2013
He added: “I have produced a lot of results, and a lot of support to the system as far as being a responsible athlete, bringing people through, helping other athletes, and it just feels like I am being told, ‘cheers, bye’,” said the captain of the judo team at the 2016 Paralympics Games.
"My life is here, my brother is here, the people who support me are here.”
"When I was a single man, I moved to Edinburgh. It was easy. I was a single man on my own, no problem. But would you move away from your family.
He still has ambitions of going for gold at the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo - but unlike other athletes will have to try and fund himself.
"I want to keep competing. First and foremost, I'm not doing it for the money. I wanna be Paralympic champion. I have a bronze, I've got a silver. I am still young enough to compete and go for gold in Tokyo.
"What BGA want is for me to go to Tokyo get a result, without forking out. But I need to pay my mortgage."
He still has ambitions of going for gold at the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo – but unlike other athletes will have to try and fund himself.
London 2012 silver medallist Gemma Gibbons, 29, who also declined funding because she would have to relocate saying that “as a married woman studying [physical education] at a Scottish university [University of Edinburgh] who believes I am in the best place for me to train right now, it is a move I am unable to make”.
She married Scottish judoka Euan Burton at The Caves in Edinburgh three years ago and the couple now live in the city.
Television coverage of the Olympics showed footage of Gibbons looking upwards and mouthing "I love you mum" after winning her semi-final match. Ms Gibbons had lost her mother to leukaemia years earlier.
A BJA spokesman said: “As part of the agreed Tokyo 2020 Strategy with UK Sport, all players on the WCPP [world class performance programme] are to based at the British Judo Centre of Excellence from 2017 onwards. In doing so we are confident that we are building a performance system that will provide consistent long-term success for British Judo.
“All players and coaches were communicated about this move throughout the Rio 2016 cycle.”
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