UK Athletics has cut the number of High Performance Centres in half in the build-up to the 2012 Olympic Games. Charles van Commenee, the head coach, wants his athletes to base themselves at Lee Valley in London and Loughborough University, and is now scouring the globe for two world-class directors to complete his team.

The decision means three centres in Birmingham and London will be downgraded with limited support services. However, UKA stressed it was not a cost-cutting measure and was part of Van Commenee's desire to streamline the system and make best use of the limited number of top-flight coaches.

“Lee Valley and Loughborough are already good centres for performance sport, but good is not good enough,” Van Commenee said. “If we want to win Olympic and World Championship medals, we need excellence.”

Niels de Vos, UKA's chief executive, said no stone was being left unturned to that end and that he was prepared to spend big to get medals in 2012. “I want to make sure the long jump runway at these centres is exactly the same as in the Olympic stadium,” he said. “I want the same pole-vault hoists and high-jump mats. We have to make it as close to the Olympic environment as possible. We want the very best people. It's a case of ‘whatever it takes'.

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“We have to get the best in and few are better. I've always thought the concept of performance management is a trendy idea that doesn't work in athletics. If a director doesn't have the credibility to influence an athlete, then he just becomes a facilities manager. We want people who can make athletes jump those three centimetres higher or run half a second faster. We are looking all over the world.”

De Vos said the centre directors would have a track record of success at Olympic level. “The analysis of Beijing showed that over 90 per cent of medal winners had a coach who had previously coached Olympic medallists,” he said. “We need the best coaches and we have very few of them in this country.”