The axe hangs over ten of Great Britain’s Olympic teams before a key funding decision next week that will define the country’s preparations for London 2012. Potential cuts in elite funding for sports such as basketball and hockey raises the prospect of Luol Deng, the NBA star, having no team to play for in 2012.

And 20 years after the exploits of players such as Sean Kerly and Stephen Batchelor helped Britain to win the gold medal in Seoul, hockey officials face a stark choice between the sexes if their £2.75 million annual grant is slashed to £1 million, as indicated.

The situation should become clear on Tuesday at a board meeting of UK Sport, the funding agency for elite athletes. It must allocate lottery grants for 2009 to 2013 on the basis of £221 million of confirmed cash available, not the £300 million it had expected. The £79 million funding gap over the next four years has put basketball, fencing, handball, shooting, table tennis, volleyball, water polo, weightlifting and wrestling “below the line” in the funding formula.

Hockey is understood to be a borderline case but faces a choice between backing a men’s team or a women’s team in the run-up to the London Games. Several Paralympic sports also face cuts.

In the March 2006 Budget, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor at the time, announced a £600 million six-year funding package for elite sport. But £100 million of it was supposed to come from the private sector. That has failed to materialise, although extra lottery receipts narrowed the gap to £79 million.

It is likely that all 28 Olympic sports and 20 Paralympic sports will receive some level of basic funding as the grants are split into three tiers. But the money to allow athletes to train full time under the guidance of top-class coaches will not be forthcoming to sports unlikely to yield a medal in 2012. This would mean that their elite programmes would be severely hit and, in some cases, they would not be able to field teams in the London Games. UK Sport has adopted a “no compromise” approach to funding, which means that each sport has to prove value for money.

After the phenomenal success of the cycling, sailing and rowing teams in Beijing, their funding levels are set to be increased. Sports that missed their targets at the Games in August but can identify genuine medal contenders for 2012 are likely to have their funding levels maintained.

But the team sports are most at risk. Britain are not only lowly ranked in sports such as volleyball and water polo, but they are expensive because of the number of people needed to win a single medal. These sports could still field a team, because the host nation automatically qualifies for every event, but this is unlikely if they are not competitive. The absence of British teams would be a blow to London Olympics officials, who want all their venues draped in the Union Jack.

The Government is still trying to raise sponsorship — Sainsbury’s is in talks about £1 million a year for the Medal Hopes programme — but it is too little, too late for UK Sport.

There could be funding boosts in years down the line. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport pledged yesterday that the funding package for London would exceed that agreed for Beijing, where Britain had their most successful Games for a century.

Peter King, the chief executive of British Cycling, the most successful sport in Beijing with 14 medals, eight of them gold, said that the process might have been better handled. “Instead of being delighted at an extra £221 million in public money, people are getting upset about a missing £79 million,” he said. “Sports need to know what their funding is going to be. The uncertainty is the concern.”

The haves and have-nots

So, who could be the winners and losers in the scramble for cash?

Winners Sports that met or exceeded their targets in Beijing in August or are able to identify potential medal-winners in 2012 — archery, athletics, badminton, boxing, canoeing, cycling, equestrianism, gymnastics (artistic), judo, modern pentathlon, rowing, sailing, swimming/diving, taekwondo, triathlon.

Losers Sports that missed their Beijing targets or have little chance of a medal in 2012 — basketball, fencing, handball, hockey, shooting, table tennis, volleyball, water polo, weightlifting and wrestling.