Dāvis Mārtiņš Daugavietis | Photo: Zane Bitere/LETA
Head of the Saeima Sports Subcommittee Dāvis Mārtiņš Daugavietis (JV) in a conversation in the podcast produced by “G03”Flexed” has commented on the current allocation of state funding to sports federations.
“Our country’s priority is for as many people as possible to be healthy. If as many people as possible will be healthy and do sports, then our country’s economy will also have lower expenses for health care, and there will be more and longer people able to work. Unfortunately, bobsleigh is not a priority at the moment. Currently, we have 15 sports that have more funding than the other 70 or more federations,” said Daugavietis.
“If we look, the first 10 federations have 90% of the people who play sports in the country. This means that the others, to whom we have also given part of the funding so far, are only 10% of all those who play sports in the country. It is the money of all taxpayers and that is the question where we want it to be spent,” said the head of the Sports Subcommittee.
“Yes, we need emotions and also Olympic champions. Zintis [Ekmanis] you won’t believe me now, but I also got up at night during the PyeongChang OS and watched both the bobsleigh and how Martin Dukurs didn’t get his last ride in the skeleton and lived through it,” revealed Daugavietis. “But this final product, Olympic gold, cannot be an end in itself for us, it must have added value.”
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