British Swimming executives are to hold talks with their Scottish counterparts and representatives of sportscotland in Edinburgh today with the future of the Intensive Training Centre in Stirling clouded in uncertainty.
With funding cuts of £3.7m imposed by UK Sport after a disappointing performance at the Olympics, and a return of just one medal at the World Championships, new performance director Chris Spice is set to undertake a widespread restructuring in a bid to reduce bureaucracy and back-office functions and free up cash for the core task of producing champions.
Of the five ITCs established in 2008, one - in Stockport - has already been scrapped. The other four are under review, including Stirling, which is a joint venture with the town's university and the Institute of Sport.
British Swimming funds the facility's head coach Rob Greenwood, who oversees a range of analysis and support services, as well as those based on-site. With very few of the UK's high- performance centres based outwith England, it is strategically significant. However, Forbes Dunlop, Scottish Swimming's chief executive, is prepared to consider alternative options for the centre's future, provided his leading athletes get the backing they require.
"We're in negotiation with British Swimming, not necessarily on the ITC but on their investment in Scottish Swimming," he said. "I've told them I don't want to get too focused on the ITC because we've got a group in Edinburgh who are swimming fantastically; we have Robbie Renwick in Glasgow and Hannah Miley up north. So the tack we're taking is over how they can support them and the wider performance infrastructure here."
Dunlop has a strong hand. Not only did Glasgow's Michael Jamieson - based at Bath's ITC - deliver the best result of any Briton at London 2012 (silver, 200m breaststroke) but, numerically, Scotland is punching above its weight. Savings must be made in order to finance the pool time and the coaching staff required to achieve results. Yet there will be resistance if Spice opts to follow athletics and concentrate resources on a single performance hub.
"Our philosophy has been to support the swimmer and the coach," said Dunlop. "We've got examples, like with Hannah, that if the environment is right and they know what they're doing, they can produce fantastic results. We don't believe they need to be centralised. There should be choice."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article