THESE ARE testing times for British sports bodies and none more so than the British Olympic Association (BOA).

 

Six months after insidethegames first reported that the body had recorded a more-than-quadrupled annual deficit of just over £1.3 million for the year ended  December 31, 2007, indications have emerged that it might again be in deficit in 2008.

 

These came in a document described as the BOA’s financial report for the year to September that was leaked recently to the Telegraph news organisation.

 

The document was said to contain a summary by BOA finance director Howard Beeston stating that, “We are forecasting a cash deficit at the end of the year of £526,000”.

 

When I spoke to him earlier this year, Colin Moynihan, the BOA’s chairman, told me that for 2008, “We expect to make a satisfactory trading surplus.”

 

So, unless I am missing something, it appears that things in recent months have not gone completely according to plan.

 

The leaked document is said to have stated that the BOA’s income of £11.6 million was £446,000 less than forecast, so it looks like the looming recession, that is making life tougher for just about every business in Britain, can shoulder part of the blame.

 

But a number of items were said to be over budget.

 

The BOA will say only that its end-of-year accounts will “reflect our strong financial support for our athletes in Beijing, which has been our top priority”.

 

1908 replay should be boost

 

As we were vividly reminded last night by the BBC’s annual Sports Personality of the Year broadcast, this approach was a success in the sense that Britain’s Beijing medals haul outstripped all expectations.

 

A one-off boost should come, meanwhile, from the recent rugby match between the Barbarians and Australia, which marked the centenary of the London 1908 Olympic rugby final.

 

Some of the proceeds from the game, which attracted 43,600 people to the new Wembley, are to go to the BOA, though we don’t yet know how much.

 

In fact, though Beeston is said to have warned that renegotiation of the BOA’s £3 million overdraft facility was “a priority”, I don’t believe that the body’s financial position need be per se a matter of particular concern.

 

There is little question that, if it adopted a minimalist approach to the activities it should be engaging in, it would be able to stroll through to London 2012 fairly comfortably, buoyed in part by the approximately £20 million over four years I am told it should receive from LOCOG, the 2012 Games organising committee.

 

But Moynihan’s ambitions for the BOA are bigger than that and what is, I think, in doubt in the present climate is the body’s ability to fund what he calls its “growth strategy”

 

This means, in effect, ensuring that it has the expertise and resources to fulfil his vision of what the role of a host-nation National Olympic Committee should be.

 

Earlier this year, I was given to understand that this once-in-a-generation responsibility might push up the BOA’s annual costs from around £13 million if the Olympics were somewhere else to more like £20 million.

 

Given that revenues in the four years up to 2012 would reach about £16 million a year without new cash-raising initiatives, there is a hole to be filled.

 

Moynihan insisted to me during our chat that he would not agree to the extra spending without knowing it could be financed.

 

"Ballsy approach" by Moynihan

 

The BOA last month appointed in quick succession a new chief executive, Andrew Hunt, and chief commercial officer, Hugh Chambers.

 

So it looks very much as though what the head of one leading UK sports body last week described to me as “the very ballsy approach of Colin’s” is about to go into overdrive.

 

But these are extremely difficult times for fundraisers - ask anyone associated with the so far fruitless attempts to raise private-sector cash to top up public funding of Britain’s top athletes in the run-up to London 2012.

 

And, if reports and comments reaching me are any guide, the harsh economic climate seems to have contributed to a rather worrying upsurge in bickering among the constituent parts of the UK’s Olympic effort.

 

This is unlikely to make the task any easier.

 

Probably the prime focus of attention in assessing whether the BOA is ultimately going to be able to fund everything it wants to do will be the elite performance programme developed by Sir Clive Woodward, the World Cup-winning former England rugby coach.

 

This has been described by Moynihan, who last year provided an interest-free loan as seed capital to enable the sports performance experts working under Woodward to be contracted, as “one of the world’s most exciting sports programmes”.

 

If the commercial backing can now be secured to enable this to press ahead at full bore, it would clearly be a big step in the right direction for Moynihan and his team.

 

But if annual revenues cannot somehow be lifted towards that £20 million mark, then sooner or later the BOA will presumably have to start scaling back its ambitions.

 

David Owen is a specialist sports journalist who worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the recent Beijing Olympics