Athletes to feel the pain of Olympic cash cuts

The blue-riband sport has paid the price for winning only four medals at this summer's Olympics - one short of its target - and will receive less than the £26.5million awarded in the four years before Beijing.

Athletics chiefs will learn details later today but are already braced for cuts which could hit coaches and competitors.

The heads of 24 publicly-funded Olympic sports will be told of any impact of a shortfall in Government funding after private-sector cash failed to materialise.

An 11th-hour intervention by Culture Secretary Andy Burnham yesterday meant the funding gap was reduced from £79m to £50m, leaving UK Sport to distribute £305m.

Burnham secured extra funding on the condition that no sport loses out entirely in the run-up to 2012.

Hockey had feared drastic cuts but is expected to gain a reprieve with an enhanced grant, thought to be £14m, despite winning no medals in Beijing.

Financial backing for British basketball has also been secured.

Earlier this week, the British Olympic Association warned that fielding a team in each sport at 2012 was a pledge made during the bid and was essential for strong tickets sales.

UK Sport is expected to apply its "no compromise" formula, putting sports with greatest medal potential on the top of its priority list.

Rowing, cycling and sailing will be rewarded for successes in Beijing.

Burnham said he hoped the remaining £50m funding would come from his 'Medal Hopes' scheme of hiring out top athletes to sponsors.

Burnham said: "I have made it clear that we have reached the very limit of public investment in Olympic sport. The challenge now is for all sports to pull together behind our scheme.

"I accept that raising private funds is challenging in the current economic conditions but British business has a great track record of investing in sport.

"I urge them to rally round the British athletes as we prepare for this historic moment of our first home Olympics in generations."