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UK Sport announces 2012 funding boost
An additional £13m funding has been made available to help Britain's Olympic and Paralympic athletes prepare ahead of the 2012 London Games, following a review by elite performance agency UK Sport.
Revised investment figures for all funded sports have been unveiled by the agency after a comprehensive annual review process, with 11 of the 12 sports that missed out on 'full' Olympic funding last year now having their allocation doubled. Handball, fencing, shooting and volleyball are among the 11 sports to benefit from the funding increase, which was made available by an initial £6.5m through credit card company's Visa's sponsorship of Team 2012 and a further £6.5m due to adjusted inflation levels.
Table tennis is the only one of the 12 'basic' funded sports forced to wait until next year to see if it will receive an increase in funding. A further 13 sports have now had investment confirmed, having previously only had planning figures. All fully-funded Olympic and Paralympic sports will have an inflationary increase of 1.5 per cent built into their allocation, while boxing has secured a further £950,000 due to the inclusion of women's disciplines at the 2012 Games.
Meanwhile, badminton will have its funding reduced from £8.63m to £7.97m after UK Sport withdrew three athlete places to reflect the current performance of senior players. A proposed contingency fund of more than £1m is also set to be created. UK Sport chief executive John Steele said: "These decisions are vital to our overall mission through to London, and represent what we believe to be the best use of the resources available from a performance perspective.
"While future funding can never be guaranteed, especially in such a difficult economic climate, they help to draw a 'line in the sand' around issues of funding and give sports a clear line of sight through to 2012." Paul Goodwin, chief executive of British Handball, added: "This funding provides us the certainty which has been lacking until now that we can fund the preparation of our senior teams for the London 2012 Olympics."
The additional £13m funding unveiled by UK Sport will help towards filling a £50m black hole in original ambitions for the 2012 Games worth £600m, which suffered as a result of the recession.
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