A number of sports, including the equestrian team, have already made bookings to use the facilities later this year.The base will cost the BOA £100,000 a year over five years to run, comparing favourably with the £1m it cost to run the two-month temporary camp on Australia's Gold Coast prior to last summer's successful Olympics. The Lofer facilities will also be subsidised by the Saltzburgerland tourist board, who will contribute £25,000 annually towards bills and other local expenses. The tourist board hopes the base will aid British success in next year's winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, on the back of which it can market its wares to the 1.4m Britons who partake in winter sports, mainly skiing and snowboarding, each year.For the likes of Baxter, the base, which officially opens on 1 May but which he has used occasionally over the past few months, will offer a home-away-from-home to athletes who are otherwise forced to live a nomadic and often dispiriting lifestyle. In a nutshell, it will mean dry clothes, clean washing and rest. It will mean easy access to genuine practice conditions as opposed to the local dry ski slope or a trolley on wheels at Thorp Park, where the bobsleigh teams have been known to train.
The advances are hardly rocket science, but such basics have been sadly lacking for Britain's winter athletes until now."The Austrians, the Swiss and the French can go home after a race, put their feet up, relax, do their washing," says Baxter "Then they go away again for another two-day trip We're living out of one bag for two months at a time. Here, at least we'll have a chance to have a wardrobe."Among the other Britons who might benefit from Lofer on the way to Salt Lake City are Baxter's cousin, Lesley McKenna, who hopes to snowboard her way to a medal in the half pipe, and Hammy McMillan, a curling world champion in 1999 who is hoping to rekindle his form. And then there's Alex Coomber, who will arguably be the nation's best prospect for any medal when she competes in the skeleton bobsleigh. Ranked No 1 in the world, the slightly-built 27-year-old intelligence officer has taken an 18-month sabbatical from the RAF to prepare for next year.The common thread for all these athletes, and the 50 or so other members of the British team who will be going to Salt Lake City and the thousands who might challenge for a slot in the team for Turin in 2006, is that they now have somewhere permanent to live and train during the season.Quite how important that might be is brought home by Baxter's coach, Christian Schwaiger, when he talks about the difficulties of nurturing talented youngsters. Above even Baxter, he says, he rated another Scottish youngster, a teenager called Paul McMillan, as "the most naturally talented skier I've ever seen and certainly the best ever in Britain".A future gold medallist then? "No," says Schwaiger "He quit last summer We lost him He couldn't handle the travelling and he had no privacy It was too tough to be out here with no home-away-from-home I think he's working in his dad's hotel in Glasgow now. It was a disaster for the sport."There's something to make the BOA queasy. And something to justify what they're doing for Baxter and Co in Austria..
The Scottish sprinter John Skeete was banned for two years by a UK Athletics disciplinary committee yesterday, despite the fact that the hearing felt he was "morally innocent''. The 22-year-old, whose victory at the British indoor trials in Birmingham on 27 January was followed by news that he had tested positive for the banned steroid Stanozolol, protested at the time that someone had spiked his dietary supplements. The Scottish sprinter John Skeete was banned for two years by a UK Athletics disciplinary committee yesterday, despite the fact that the hearing felt he was "morally innocent''. The 22-year-old, whose victory at the British indoor trials in Birmingham on 27 January was followed by news that he had tested positive for the banned steroid Stanozolol, protested at the time that someone had spiked his dietary supplements. Summarising the findings of the disciplinary committee, the chairman, Colin Ross-Munro QC, made it clear that Skeete's explanation had been accepted, even though the presence of a banned substance in his sample meant that he had to be sanctioned under the rules of the International Amateur Athletic Federation."Allegations are easy to make,'' Ross-Munro said, "whereas it is quite exceptional to be able to present such impressive evidence that led us to make such findings in favour of John Skeete.''Skeete said at the time of the findings that he had reported the person he believed to be responsible to the police and intended to press charges.
A spokesman for West Midlands Police confirmed yesterday that a complaint had been received "in relation to an allegation that an individual has been administered with a controlled substance without his consent.''The force could not say how long its investigations will take, although no arrest is believed to have been made. Skeete himself said he was unable to make any comment on his case because of the legal ramifications. The disciplinary committee decided that Skeete had "a wholly exceptional case'' in relation to a possible application for early reinstatement by the IAAF.Skeete's emergence at the trials was dramatic, as he broke the 14-year-old Scottish record for 60m with a time of 6.59sec. Once Stanozolol had shown up in his urine sample, he requested that UK Athletics release details of the test and pulled out of the World Indoor Championships, which took place in Lisbon earlier this month, even though he was not technically suspended until yesterday's announcement.Before his emergence in Birmingham he had endured a number of injuries. Although he runs for Scotland, the country of his mother's birth, Skeete comes from Harrow and had been training for four months before the trials. The two British athletes chosen for the 60m at the World Indoor Championships were both successful. Christian Malcolm won a silver at 200m and Mark Lewis-Francis won a bronze medal in a world junior record of 6.51sec..
The price of success is high, as the England and Wales Cricket Board is discovering. The award of 12 England contracts for the seven Test matches this summer against Pakistan (two) and Australia (five) is going to cost the ECB around £1.25m an increase of between 20 and 25 per cent on last year. The price of success is high, as the England and Wales Cricket Board is discovering. The award of 12 England contracts for the seven Test matches this summer against Pakistan (two) and Australia (five) is going to cost the ECB around £1.25m an increase of between 20 and 25 per cent on last year. This time around, however, the ECB insists it has got things right. Last year there was a preponderance of batsmen, which defeated the fundamental objective of central contracting, which is to protect pace bowlers from over-use and abuse by counties. This year the contracts are essentially six of one and half a dozen of the other.The players will be paid according to a banding system based on performance over the last 12 months and on seniority.
