Graphic: Road to London: winners and losers in the race for funding

Athletics, the showcase sport of the Olympics, received a funding cut before the London Games yesterday as sports chiefs rewarded the heroes of Beijing in cycling, rowing, swimming and sailing. The drop in funding from £26.5 million to £25.1 million — the biggest of any sport — was announced despite the overwhelming focus of public attention during the Games falling on the Olympic stadium, where a home crowd will expect to see gold medals won by British athletes.

By contrast, the biggest investment in any sport is in rowing, in which six medals were won in Beijing, helping to earn it a 5.5 per cent increase to £27.4 million over the next four years.

UK Sport, the funding agency for elite athletes, said its funding formula — used to divide £246.8 million among 19 Olympic sports and £45.6 million among 15 Paralympic sports — was driven by a “no compromise” principle of delivering medals. Britain aims to match its performance in Beijing — the best medal haul for a century, with 19 golds, 13 silvers and 15 bronzes — by finishing fourth at the London Games, with more medals across more sports.

A total of 12 sports were not allocated any funds, but will have to fight for a share of a £12 million contingency pot that could be topped up if UK Sport can attract private investment. They will learn their fate in January.

Athletics was one of only two sports — the other was badminton — to be dealt weaker financial resources compared with Beijing. It failed to meet its target of five medals in Beijing, bringing only one gold medal home, courtesy of Christine Ohuruogu in the 400 metres. Its prospects for London 2012 are little better. After an internal overhaul and the appointment of a head coach, Charles van Commenee, UK Athletics will fund 30 athletes for London compared with 40 for Beijing.

But UK Sport said that athletics was expected to produce only six medals in London and gave warning that the dividends of the new coaching system may not yield results until 2016. “The true story, given that it takes six to eight years to nurture talent, will ultimately be in 2016,” Peter Keen, the UK Sport head of performance, said. “There will be some surprises and it will depend on how quickly they can identify kids and bring them through, but a significant proportion of this money will be spent on people who will do well in 2016.”

The pressure will be on the 30 chosen athletes to deliver medals in 2012 in exchange for a still sizeable amount of public money. Athletics will be the best-backed sport after rowing, cycling and swimming and could earn an increase after the World Championships next year.

Niels de Vos, chief executive of UK Athletics, said he was aiming to have a Briton in every other final in the Olympic stadium in 2012. This would mean producing 26 finalists in the 47 track and field events. “I admit it is ambitious, but we have enough money to achieve it,” he said. “The absolute focus of the money is on the people who can produce the golden moments.

“We have a very tight management job. Athletics is not a sport in Britain that has delivered five or six gold medals for many years. America only got six in Beijing and China threw every resource at it. It’s harder than in a sport such as cycling where a team of 12 people can win an obscene number of medals.”

Cycling, which was Britain’s most successful sport in Beijing, with 14 medals, received a 22 per cent increase in funding to £26.9 million.

Basketball and Hockey were under threat before a last-minute injection of cash from the Treasury on Tuesday night. They received a 137 per cent increase and a 43 per cent increase respectively. Chris Spice, the British Basketball performance director, said: “The funding recognises some of the real potential for basketball in this country and the real chance that we have to create a legacy by playing in London in 2012.”

There were recriminations from the sports that fared worse. Shooting, in which Britain won a gold medal in Sydney, received nothing, alongside volleyball, fencing, handball, table tennis, water polo, weightlifting and wrestling.

“We are still eighth in the medal table since 1980 at the Olympics and we have been put in with some sports, with due respect, that have never won an Olympic medal before. It is slightly galling,” John Leighton-Dyson, the British Shooting performance director, said. “We have tremendous young talent coming through the ranks and we need to maximise the opportunities to win medals. We are disappointed that, having made improvements to the way we work as a sport, we have been put in the at-risk group for future funding.”

Judo, in which Britain returned from Beijing empty-handed after missing their target of two medals, received a 10 per cent increase from £6.9 million to £7.6 million to reflect a pipeline of talent and a large number of medals on offer. Yet Scott McCarthy, the chief executive of the British Judo Association, questioned larger increases for sports with lower prospects. “There is also at least one sport that received a huge increase in funding and this sport has no realistic medal prospects at all,” he said. “We expect a level playing field, both on the mat and in the corridors of power, and I am not sure we have seen that.”