The funding cuts announced yesterday were widely expected and uncontroversial, yet they simultaneously ask a key question of the broader vision: what exactly did we want these Games for in the first place?

UK Sport, the funding body that has executed the cuts, appears to have made a sensible call. With its “no compromise” approach, it has targeted medals. So success has been rewarded; rowing and cycling, highly successful in Beijing, have become the best-funded sports and the weaker sports have become weaker. Team GB, in other words, are a leaner, meaner operation. If medals are what we want, then who could argue?

In its 2006 Budget, however, the Government argued for something else altogether. UK Sport made a variety of funding proposals, one of which was the no-compromise, medals-only approach, yet the suggestion the Government ticked, known as Option Two, was to fund every Olympic summer sport to allow British teams throughout the Games to perform creditably. This was all about using the Olympics as a shop window and the intended legacy that they would create.

However, by not standing by its funding pledge and forcing UK Sport to snip away at the funding, the entire premise has changed. What is left is the no-compromise charge up the medals table, and we will also be left with an unsatisfactory halfway house arrangement. UK Sport has not had the heart to cut off the weaker sports altogether — 12, including four Paralympic sports, are looking at sharing a pot of £12 million, a funding cut that averages out at about 50 per cent.

However, while reaching “creditable” standards was already a tough enough task for sports such as handball and volleyball — and one that they were setting about with notable success — it is absurd to suggest that they can charge on at the same rate with half the cash.

UK Sport made it clear that it would continue its search for more funding for the sports that are due to suffer. While they keep their fingers crossed, though, these sports will have to limp in comparative pauper’s clothes towards 2012.

On one point, though, the British Olympic Association and UK Sport have been clear: we will not court humiliation. If an athlete or a team cannot perform creditably, they will not be selected.

So at some stage, those without the stamp of approval will be cut and it will be perfectly reasonable to ask why all that Lottery money was spent on them. The answer will be Option Two. It will also be because the Government believed in what the Games could deliver. But it just did not believe it enough.