11 sports join forces to revolt in new call for UK Sport to reverse cuts – Telegraph.co.uk

The biggest ever revolt against Great Britain’s ‘no compromise’ Olympic and Paralympic medal-winning formula will be reignited on Thursday when 11 sports snubbed by funding chiefs call for new UK Sport chairman Dame Katherine Grainger to scrap the policy.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal that the national governing bodies of archery, badminton, baseball/softball, basketball, fencing, handball, table tennis, volleyball, weightlifting, wrestling and wheelchair rugby have joined forces to demand Grainger, who officially starts this week, conducts a review of the decisions made by the government-appointed body for Tokyo 2020 and beyond.

The move by the 11 sports is being backed by the chairman of UK Athletics, Ed Warner, who broke ranks in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph in December to condemn UK Sport’s funding award for the next four years.

That meant archery, badminton, fencing, weightlifting and wheelchair rugby were all stripped of millions of pounds of public money, and other sports failed to regain funding lost after London 2012.

The decision provoked a backlash from those involved in each sport, and campaigns for that support to be reinstated. However it was the intervention of Warner that represented the biggest challenge to the ‘no-compromise’ model that lifted Britain from one gold medal at the 1996 Olympics to 29 at London 2012 and a record 67 at Rio 2016, the first time the head of one of the big winners of that approach to funding had spoken out publicly on behalf of the losers.