Schnegg says Swiss sport must keep investing to avoid falling back

Swiss sport has reached a high level but must continue to develop and receive more funding to remain competitive internationally, outgoing Swiss Olympic director Roger Schnegg told SRF. Swiss athletes won seven medals at last week’s European Athletics Championships alone.

Schnegg said Switzerland’s success had become almost expected, but warned that this could obscure the work behind it. Medals were no longer isolated achievements, he said, with Swiss sport now producing strong results across a broad range of disciplines.

In recent weeks, Swiss athletes have also won World or European Championship medals in swimming, fencing, canoeing, diving, BMX and mountain biking.

Schnegg attributed the development partly to stronger support for sport. During the pandemic, federal assistance helped athletes and clubs through a difficult period. Swiss Olympic can now distribute significantly more money to sports federations than it could 10 years ago.

More money does not automatically produce more medals, Schnegg said, but it is a decisive factor. It allows federations to employ more professional coaches and support staff, while giving athletes the opportunity to work less or not at all alongside their training. Such conditions are now essential at international level.

Successful athletes also inspire young people, Schnegg said. When Mujinga Kambundji wins, hundreds of children may suddenly want to take up sprinting. Even athletes who do not reach the very top can bring valuable experience from elite sport into wider society, including the workplace.

Schnegg said he would never have enough of sporting success, but added that international competitors were continuing to invest heavily, including countries in Asia and the Gulf region that had previously been less focused on sport. “If we stand still, we will fall back in international comparison,” he said.

Schnegg will leave Swiss Olympic at the end of August after 14 years and become head of Bernexpo, which organises trade fairs and events in Bern. He said he looked forward to continuing to work with events, joking that this could mean a pig race at the BEA trade fair rather than a 100-metre sprint at Zurich’s Letzigrund stadium.