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Sport England figures show athletics is growing fast – and we want to thank clubs, coaches, volunteers and athletes for their outstanding work in our sport's success! Athletics and cycling have been shown to be the two major success stories in raising participation in new research done by Sport England.

An announcement made today says athletics and cycling have both seen increases of 112,000 participants in the past year and chair of Sport England Richard Lewis has praised the work done in the two sports saying: “Six months into a four-year funding period, we’re delighted that sports such as athletics and cycling are already delivering substantial growth."

The report also said, “Both [athletics and cycling] have benefited from the development of strong grassroots programmes alongside a growing number of mass participation events, low participant costs and a strong and improving performance at elite level which has led to increased profile of the sport.”

Chief executive Mike Summers said: “The announcement of this level of growth in athletics is great news and a just reward for everyone involved in the sport. This year has seen the launch of McCain Athletics Networks, our coach mentoring scheme and the Run In England initiative for beginners. All of these programmes see England Athletics channelling our resources and the efforts of our staff straight to the heart of the athletics community - our clubs and volunteers who work so hard throughout the country.

“By empowering clubs, coaches and officials, and enabling them to work together more effectively we are building a strong future for our sport.

“These results are clearly the result of partnership - the partnership of staff working with volunteers, and of volunteers working together. I would like to thank the England Athletics staff but also want to thank and congratulate our volunteer workforce as it is their efforts that these results are built on.

“Our volunteers are incredibly committed, talented and knowledgeable. By strengthening the partnerships in place in our sport athletics as a whole is able to benefit.

“The inspiring performances of our top athletes have also been mentioned by Sport England. Athletics sees a unique link between our clubs and our athletes. Our athletes at the highest level always retain an incredible affinity with their home clubs and the coaches that have nurtured them that simply does not exist in other sports. We in athletics can truly say that they are ‘our’ athletes; coaches, officials, young athletes and volunteers can all take pride, inspiration and motivation from their performances.”

England Athletics' McCain Athletics Networks initiative support clubs now has 55 funded and non-funded networks, 27 of these have funding agreements in place with England Athletics. At this stage 387 clubs have signed up and it is expect that this number will rise to around 500 clubs over the next 12 months as networks expand. Just under £2million partnership funding has already been secured beyond England Athletics' McCain and Sport England funding!

There are now around 204 coaches on our National Coach Development Programme. The Local Coach Development Programme is growing fast with more than 300 coaches already signed up. More than 400 coaches attended our National Coaching Conferences. England Athletics supported 139 coaches to attend the International Festival of Athletics Coaching (IFAC) in Glasgow where they attended presentations by world class coachesand athletes. Recent coaching Masterclasses have been attended by up to 100 coaches at a time giving more opportunities for coaches to develop their skills and share their ideas.

• Sport England Press Release - 16 December 2009
• Sport England Sport Participation figures
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