Table tennis denied funding boost by UK Sport

By Holly Hamilton, Sportsbeat

TABLE tennis has been left out in the cold by UK Sport after it was announced it would be receiving no extra funding ahead of London 2012 - despite seven other sports seeing their cash reinstated.

NO REWARD: Paul Drinkhall has failed to impress in a 2009 campaign which saw him bow out of the English Open in the second round

Table tennis was one of eight Olympic sports to have its funding slashed earlier this year and it will have to continue on its budget of £1.2m.

The seven remaining sports - handball, water polo, volleyball, weightlifting, fencing, wrestling and shooting - have all seen their funding approximately doubled largely due to UK Sport's new Team 2012 partnership with VISA.

Table tennis had their funding more than halved from £2.52million to £1.2million in January and failed to impress in UK Sport's quarterly report for October to December.

The report stated that performances have not yet demonstrated the levels of consistency required to move towards the podium and that the programme has still to fully adjust to the financial reality of basic funding.

British number one Paul Drinkhall bowed out of October's English Open in the second round while his doubles campaign with Darius Knight also faltered.

But UK Sport chief executive John Steele remains confident the sport can still do well at London 2012.

"We will work with them in the next year looking at their plans in detail and trying to help them achieve their goals and how best to develop players' potential," said Steele.

"Hopefully next year we can put more investment into the sport when we feel it is at the correct stage to receive this and it can move on from there to be successful.

"Our funding is based on performance and I am very confident we have done the best by British sport at this time."

Richard Callicott, president of British Volleyball, hopes that their increased funding from £1.75m to £3.5m will ensure they see their maximum allocation of athletes performing at 2012.

"For the past year we have been working extremely hard to focus our efforts to ensure we had the ability to see all our athletes compete on home soil - but we took a big risk doing so," said Callicott.

"UK Sport have shown today that it has recognised the tremendous progress we have made and that our gamble was worth it."

Handball have seen their budget rise back up almost to pre-Beijing levels from £1.5m to £2.9m.

Paul Goodwin, chief executive of British Handball, now wants to build a sustainable future for the sport and a legacy that will last beyond 2012.

"This funding provides us with the certainty which has been lacking until now that we can fund the preparation of our senior teams for the London 2012 Olympics," said Goodwin.

"I hope the confidence shown by UK Sport today will now encourage the public and commercial partners to really get behind Team 2012 and British Handball and support our athletes."