Olympic Funding for 2008 Announced

UK Sport's funding for Olympic success in Beijing has been announced with handball and synchronised swimming among the winners.ut with the warning that if they underperform in Beijing they would lose their financial backing. "No sport has a God-given right to funding," their performance adviser Peter Keen said. "It has to be done on merit."

Governing bodies of the individual sports were told exactly how much cash they would receive, with increased spending of £65.3m on 27 sports and disciplines for the three years through to the 2008 Olympics and Paralympics .

The move follows the chancellor Gordon Brown's announcement last month that £300m would be available for preparing British competitors for the 2012 Olympics. An additional £17m is being invested in 2006-07, with a share in the further planned tranches - £23.2m in 2007-08 and £25.1m in 2008-09 - conditional upon each sport meeting a series of funding triggers.

Increases in funding for the first year range from 379% for wrestling to 4% for triathlon. Handball, water polo, volleyball, synchronised swimming and basketball also get their first grants even though they have remote medal prospects for 2012. Only the cash-rich sports of tennis and football are excluded from the funding process, which is designed to propel Britain to fourth place in the 2012 medals table with some 60 medals.

To achieve the target an estimated 520 competitors would have to be funded to the highest "world class podium" level, costing £70,000 a year, and a further 1,080 would have to be supported to "world class development" level.

Britain has a target of moving into the top eight in the Beijing medals table, from 10th place in Athens 2004. "After Beijing we will look where we are and there will be winners and losers after that - but we will do it in a way that everyone can understand what is going on," Keen said. "Funding could be repositioned to sports that are doing better. These are big carrots but big sticks as well. It is a no-compromise approach, and we will be tough."

He rejected suggestions that athletics - which gets a 7% increase this year with an additional £6.6m - had been harshly treated and hinted at a significant post-2008 increase in funding if British athletes are successful in Beijing.

Stephen Neilson, chairman of the British Handball Association, welcomed this year's grant of £580,000. "It is the first time we have had the opportunity to compete and we relish a big challenge," he said. "We have 5,000 kids involved in the sport and there has been huge interest in schools, particularly in London, ever since we won the [2012] games."

Where the money goes

2006-2009

1 Athletics: up 7%* to £20,378,000

2 Rowing: up 8%* to £20,049,000

3 Cycling: up 22%* to £17,494,000

4 Sailing: up 9%* to £17,494,000

5 Swimming: up 306%* to £16,699,000

6 Canoeing: up 23%* to £10,789,000

*Funding increase 2006-2007