Among the medals - athlete tesimonials
But getting funding isn’t that easy. Under UK Sport’s ‘no compromise’ approach, only the nation’s medal hopefuls such as Alan will receive full funding. UK Sport’s head of communications Matthew Crawcour said the following in defence of their funding;
“We’re never going to say we don’t think sports should enjoy more money and more funding – we know a great deal about what it takes to support and athlete and the extent to which becoming a full time athlete requires a great amount of commitment and investment - so yes we would always be able to do more with more money. But we’re reasonably satisfied the funding package the government has given us as of this last budget is sufficient to enable us to move towards fourth place in the Olympic table which is what we think is the limit of what the UK with all its demographic constraints can actually achieve. Hopefully with continuity of funding beyond 2012 the move is still upwards.
“There’s an awful lot of athletes out there for us too work with and that have the talent that demands we work should with them - the money we have is great, with more obviously we could be more supportive of people and not spread the jam so thinly as we have to”, he added.