Athletics in the UK: The Rise and Fall of the BAF

91 A poisoned chalice? The BAF itself would continue in its constitutional role as the governing body and would oversee and coordinate the activities of the two new subsidiaries. Hopefully the sports dependence on television based income would, at long last, be broken. Radford had also ensured that athletics had secured a place at the table in the discussions about a possible National Stadium to replace the outdated Wembley Stadium. The inclusion of an athletics track would, for the first time, provide a stadium suitable to host a World or European athletics championship and, indeed, a bid to host the 2001 World championships was launched at the same time. This bid proved to be successful but was aborted when the Government withdrew its support. But all in the garden was not rosy as, once again, the sport shot itself in the foot by rejecting a further attempt to create what was now seen as an essential registration, or membership, scheme. The Chairman (Ken Rickhuss) and Honorary Secretary (Matt Frazer) had made a huge effort to get the scheme off the ground, travelling to every BAF region to argue the case. Several regions had already introduced local schemes but it again proved impossible to extend these nationally. The BAF, and before it the AAA and the BAAB, received a small amount of public finance through the Sports Councils and the vast majority of its income came from television and sponsorship income produced by its major events. Naturally, a significant part of this income had to be spent on the events that created it in the first place and, out of what was left, coaching, major championships teams, administration, development and support to regional associations all had to be funded. Opposition to membership or registration schemes had usually foundered on the misconceived belief that the monies raised would simply be channelled to the top athletes (“ who already took too much out of the sport ”). It had been the oft repeated desire to rid itself of its dependence on fragile income from TV and sponsorship that had driven the need for the sport to provide more of its money itself. There was also continuing aggravation from the South of England Association and the AAA of England. For years the Southern Counties had questioned the arrangements for their grand prix event which had been sponsored initially by Peugeot Talbot and called the Peugeot Talbot Games. When ITV had made its successful bid for the athletics contract in 1985, the South had agreed for this event to be included in the overall contract but the South had then