Great Britain on track for London 2012 success, says UK Sport

By Gerard Meagher, Sportsbeat

GREAT Britain remain firmly on track for successful Olympic and Paralympic Games at London 2012, according to UK Sport.

HAPPY CHAP: Departing UK Sport chief executive John Steele believes he is leaving Great Britain's Olympic hopes in rude health before taking the reins at the RFU (Getty Images)

The body responsible for distributing public funding to elite sport in the UK today revealed their updated Mission 2012 statement which shows that Great Britain remain on course to finish at least fourth in the Olympic medals table and second in the Paralympics table.

The statement comes despite funding cuts in May which amounted to three per cent of UK Sport's budget while further cuts could well be announced when the coalition government completes its Comprehensive Spending Review in October.

But UK Sport today unveiled their ‘tracker board' system which gives a traffic-light rating to each of the Olympic and Paralympic sports that they fund - with positive results.

Not one was given a red rating, while there were nine green ratings - the same number as the last quarter - with synchronised swimming dipping from green to amber and taekwondo going the other way.

UK Sport director of performance Peter Keen was quick to explain synchronised swimming's dip as a result of a back injury sustained by Jenna Randall, who is one half of Great Britain's elite duet, along with Olivia Alison.

But that was offset by taekwondo's success in achieving four medals at the European Championships earlier this year - and UK Sport chief executive John Steele insists he's pleased with what he sees.

"It's indicative of the fact that the major challenges that we've been faced with over the last couple of years have been addressed," said Steele, who imminently departs his post to the reins at the Rugby Football Union.

 "No doubt there will be more challenges to address in the coming years but the point of this process is to identify those problems and gradually we're getting more and more positive results.

"It was very soon after the London bid was victorious that we sat down and asked ourselves what we were going to aspire to and the answer was very clear - we want to be in the top four in the Olympics medals table and top two in the Paralympics medals table.

"And we've since confirmed that we want to be top four and top two and achieve more medals across more sports - so an uplift on Beijing and we believe we are on track for that.

"We are by no means complacent and we're not saying that we are there yet but the progress we have made shows that we're moving in the right direction.

"The established sports are doing what we'd expect but you cannot take that for granted but there are a lot of other sports which have not previously enjoyed success that are now delivering and recent reports are very positive.

"I'll be quite blunt about it, the cuts were painful but that has happened but are job is to move forward and make sure we can provide for the future.

"But it's incredibly positive at the moment. It's very ambitious but it's achievable and it's all about stretching yourself and pushing yourself and that's what we've done here."