Elite sport funding body UK Sport has announced it will invest a record £330 million in British Olympic and Paralympic sports for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
More than 50 sports will benefit, even though the athletics budget has been cut for the second consecutive cycle.
Five new sports for the 2028 Games – baseball/softball, flag football, lacrosse, para-climbing and squash – have all received funding.
Breaking, presented for the first time at the Paris Games this summer, is no longer eligible for support after being removed from the Olympic program.
The total figure will rise to £400m with the addition of Athlete Performance Awards (APA), which are paid directly to individual athletes and contribute to their living and sporting costs so they can concentrate on competing – around £70 million was awarded in the form of APA to Paris. funding round, which totaled £385 million.
Sally Munday, chief executive of UK Sport, said BBC Sport funding should not be seen as a “reward” or “punishment” for performance at the Paris Games.
“The decision we made against all sports is we looked at their potential,” Munday said.
“UK Athletics will receive over £30 million for the Olympic and Paralympic programs and we believe this will put them in an ideal position to support their athletes before they arrive in Los Angeles.”
Jack Buckner, CEO of UK Athletics, said the organization was “disappointed” by the decision to cut the sport’s share by £1.725 million, and highlighted that the 10 medals at the 2023 World Championships and at this year’s Olympic Games “deserved a higher level of reward.” investment”.
Canoeing is another sport whose funding has been cut by more than £500,000. When taking into account the total funding for the Paris 2024 cycle, modern pentathlon and equestrian received a smaller budget, but rowing increased from £22.72 million to £24.85 million sterling, despite a reduction between Tokyo and Paris.
Meanwhile, British Basketball Federation president Chris Grant said the sport “has entered a new era” with an allocation of £2.925 million, mainly to help develop the 3×3 format of the game.
Great Britain won 65 medals at this year’s Games and 124 at the Paralympics.
They finished seventh in the Olympic medal table, behind sixth-placed Netherlands and fifth-placed France, but Munday said the aim was to be “consistently in the top five”.
“We’re going to be really forensic: Are there any contributing factors that we could do differently to make sure we don’t find ourselves in this position again?” Munday said.
“We will go to great lengths to make sure that we really understand what the factors are as to why we came seventh. But we are very clear that we want to be consistently in the top five.”
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