UK Sport insists sports will only be funded on merit

By Gerard Meagher and Richard Anderson, Sportsbeat

SPORTS whose funding was slashed earlier this year may not benefit from Visa's multi-million pound sponsorship of the British Olympic and Paralympic teams.

FUNDING BOOST: Representatives of all Olympic and Paralympic sports at the launch of Visa's Team 2012 in Stratford (Getty Images)

UK Sport confirmed that the sponsorship - valued by experts at between six and ten million pounds - would be used in addition to funding via their World Class Performance Plan and cash from the Government.

But eight Olympic sports - handball, table tennis, water polo, volleyball, weightlifting, fencing, wrestling and shooting - who were particularly badly hit when a £50m funding shortfall was revealed earlier this year, will not be singled out for special consideration.

"Those sports will not be given priority - they are in the mix along with everyone else," said UK Sport chief executive John Steele.

"We will be investing this money on merit and will make our decision based on performance.

"It's our job to make sure that we drive value and we that are behind the most successful team possible at London 2012.

"We will be looking at our end of year review and seeing then what changes can be made to our funding distribution.

"There have been some great performances across the board in 2009 and some not so great."

Handball and water polo saw their Olympic budgets trimmed from £2.9m to £1.4m and £3.1m to £1.4m respectively.

Despite this they've enjoyed some encouraging performances in 2009.

Great Britain's women's water polo team won the European Nations Trophy in Manchester, while the men achieved their best-ever finish, fourth, at the European B Championships.

And last weekend, Great Britain's women's handball team progressed to the European Championships qualifying stages for the first time ever, with a convincing two-leg victory over Finland.

"We'd certainly be disappointed if we didn't see some of this funding because our results have shown that we have hit the targets set out for us," said men's handball captain Huw Goodwin.

"A lot has been said about the funding and a lot was made of it earlier this year. We have continued to train hard and make significant strides and have performed excellently recently.

"In order for us to keep improving and meet our targets at London 2012, we'd like to think we would get more funding."

Table tennis saw their UK Sport funding cut by over 50 percent to £1.2m after failing to qualify a single player to last year's Olympics in Beijing.

And earlier this month they disappointed again at the European Championships in Stuttgart, although the men's team did climb into the top 20 for the first time in a decade.

"I'm not getting carried away - we don't know where the money is going at the moment and I'm not holding my breath," said British number two Darius Knight.

There was initial resistance to the Team 2012 concept from many leading Olympic athletes - with the agents of big-name stars Sir Chris Hoy, Christine Ohuruogu and Rebecca Adlington claiming it would restrict their clients earning power.

However, UK Sport have reached a compromise agreement that will mean no fewer than four athletes from a minimum of three sports will be used in images to promote Visa's sponsorship, while no one athlete will be given prominence.

“This is a terrific vote of confidence by the business community in the work being done to give our medal hopefuls the best chance of striking gold in 2012,” said Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe.

“It is fantastic that Visa has stepped forward, and I am confident that this extra funding - building on the unprecedented levels of public funding for our athletes - will help our Olympic and Paralympic teams deliver even more medals in London.”