Athletics: Lottery Money Being Wasted, Claims Jones

Max Jones, Britain's former performance director, has claimed that the distribution of lottery funding during the build-up to the 2012 London Olympics needs a major overhaul, because too many of the country's top athletes are wasting the public's money.

Jones, who retired from UK Athletics in February 2005, claims athletes have grown complacent because they receive money without first having to perform to justify the outlay. "Back in 1997 I was naive enough to believe that if you gave an athlete £20,000 a year they would train their socks off to improve. Some did but an awful lot let UKA and themselves down by accepting the comfort zone."

Currently, 109 British athletes receive lottery funding. Darren Campbell, the 2000 Olympic 200m silver medallist and a member of the British 4x100m squad that won the gold medal in Athens in 2004, has also acknowledged that Britain's athletes are wasting lottery money, because it made some feel comfortable and took away their edge to perform.

Jones, whose last major event was the 2004 Athens Olympics where Britain wonthree gold medals, was replaced by Dave Collins, who has overseen some of the worst performances ever by a British team. At the European Championships in Gothenburg last year the team failed to win a single gold medal in an individual event despite being the best funded and best prepared in history.