Olympics: Victory Parade for Team Gb But Funding May Be Cut

The superbly successful Great Britain Olympic team, who yesterday picked up their 26th and 27th medals of the Beijing games, will be rewarded with a victory parade in London, it was revealed yesterday.

The squad is on track to record one of GB's biggest medal hauls at an Olympics and will now be given a heroes parade through the capital on October 16. "Just over halfway through the Beijing games and Team GB has put in one of its best ever performances," London's mayor, Boris Johnson, said. "In September our Paralympians will, I hope, return from Beijing having achieved similar success. So to reflect the excitement and pride of the country in their superb victories, we've set a date when we can cheer all our heroes and honour their extraordinary feats."

Simon Clegg, the BOA's chief executive, added: "This is a fitting tribute to the outstanding achievements of the whole team, who have so far delivered Team GB's most successful Olympic Games since 1920."

There are some clouds on the horizon, though, with fresh concerns that the athletes could face funding cuts ahead of 2012. There are major doubts among Olympic stakeholders about whether the promised package of a £100m-a-year between now and 2012 will be delivered in full. UK Sport, the body that distributes funding to elite athletes, meets to set each sport's funding package for 2012 in just six weeks, but is yet to receive any guarantee that it will not have to make cuts.

In 2006 Gordon Brown promised an extra £300m to Olympic sport, taking the total funding over six years to 2012 to £600m, but insisted that £100m had to be raised by DCMS from the private sector. With no rights to the valuable Olympic brand, however, the department has failed to raise any of the money and senior figures with knowledge of the project accept that the £100m will not be raised in full.

Lord Moynihan, chairman of the BOA, last night called on Brown to deliver on his promise. "Gordon Brown gave a commitment to deliver £100m a year to fund our athletes until the London games . . . and we look to him to honor that commitment." A spokesman for the culture secretary, Andy Burnham, said last night that DCMS "would not walk away from our Olympic champions" but did not guarantee to cover any shortfall in the £100m.