British basketball faces an “unsustainable and untenable” position and is so lacking in resources it is unable to employ a single person full-time. That is the stark message from the sport’s chairman, Chris Grant, just two days before GB’s women aim to take a major step towards qualifying for the Olympics for the first time.
In an open letter seen by the Guardian, Grant also questions why basketball receives so little funding compared to sports such as sailing when it is the second most played team sport in the UK after football, with 1.3 million regular participants – 47% of whom are from backgrounds other than white British – and has a women’s team that has broken into the world’s top 20.
