After the British team enjoyed it’s most impressive medal haul in a century at its recent hometown Games, they’ll attempt to out-do themselves on foreign soil in Rio four years from now.
UK Sport will hope to exceed its London victories by dumping all its funding into the country’s most successful sports (rowing, cycling, biathloning) and focus the support in events with medal potential, whether they’re individual or team disciplines.
“Investment will be targeted where it has the greatest chance of succeeding using our ‘no compromise’ philosophy, which sets out to reinforce the best, support those developing and challenge the under-performing,” sports chief Liz Nicholl said in a statement.
Team GB finished third on London’s medal table, pulling in 65 medals – including 29 gold. That’s up from the 47 they won in Beijing and more than four times the medal haul from Atlanta sixteen years ago.
And while the boys and girls of British cycling were shouting “huzzah!” at Tuesday’s news, volleyball, which received only $2.7 million of the more than $500 million earmarked for funding for 2009-13, was crying foul.
“If we say we are not going to fund you unless you perform in a sport with a track history of medals then the legacy of our home Games is actually a reduction of opportunity not an increase,” Team GB volleyball president Richard Callicott told the Sunday Times.
“That’s not what I thought London 2012 was supposed to represent.”
