SOK boss is self-critical: “We should have done more earlier”

In October, the international research study SPLISS showed just that Sweden is lagging behind Countries comparable in terms of the amount of resources spent on elite sports. Among other things, Norway and Denmark invest 50 percent more than Sweden in Olympic sports.

Now a private SOK survey shows that almost every fifth Swedish Olympian in the Topp och Talang support program lives below the subsistence minimum.

– If you look in the mirror, we of course had to be better at lifting this up. Now we’ve decided to be clear that this is a big deal. The competition is getting tougher, more and more countries are betting. If we want to be part of the future, we need to get at least as close to what our neighboring countries are investing in their best sports, says SOK COO Peter Rainbow.

“unknown fact”

According to him, SOK is “very good” at working with companies. Now they want to make the state understand the seriousness.

What we are working on now is for the government to understand that the top athletes who compete for Sweden have a hard reality. Not all, but most. This fact is unknown. We might have done more there earlier. We will make up for that now.

Do you want more money from the state?

More money for this part of the sport, yes.

Want to increase scholarship levels?

Is it mainly the Minister of Sports that you are addressing at the time?

– The Minister of Sports is a person. But perhaps we also need to turn to sports political speakers in all parties, and we started doing that even before the election. And members of parliament engaged in sports affairs, and this is quite a lot.

Do you want to increase the level of scholarships?

– We urgently need to increase the scholarship system. That’s a lot. The second part is the whole socio-economic situation. That we have active personnel who are not part of the security system.

How should it be solved?

– One option is to see scholarships as part of the income from the service. This is not the case today. But we know that they are being sought for cultural scholarships in Sweden. The hope is that this also applies to sports scholarships, says Peter Rainbow.